Pathogenesis of foot-and-mouth disease: the lung as an additional portal of entry of the virus.

Donor cattle infected with foot and mouth disease (FMD) virus subtype O1 were used to expose experimental cattle. The pharyngeal virus growth and viraemia patterns after contact exposure were quite different from those obtained after intranasal inoculation and suggested that the lower respiratory tract might provide an additional portal of entry for the virus. A tracheotomy was performed on experimental cattle to let the respiration bypass the pharynx, followed by exposure to FMD virus by different routes. The results confirmed that FMD virus can enter the bloodstream via the lung, followed by haematogenic infection of the pharynx and other replication sites simultaneously. These observations led to further experiments in which the intravenous route of infection was used to study the interaction of virus growth in the phayrnx, in other sites, and in viraemia.