Interferon gamma is involved in the recovery of athymic nude mice from recombinant vaccinia virus/interleukin 2 infection.

Athymic nude mice recover from an infection with recombinant vaccinia virus (VV) encoding murine interleukin 2 (IL-2), but treatment with a mAb to IL-2 accentuated infection. Administration of a mAb against interferon gamma (IFN-gamma) to mice infected with the IL-2-encoding virus completely prevented the IL-2-induced mechanisms of recovery. Both asialo-GM1+ (NK) and asialo-GM1- (non-NK) cells were participants in the IFN-gamma-mediated recovery of nude mice from infection with the IL-2-encoding VV recombinant. Depletion of asialo-GM1+ cells exacerbated infection, though not as much as anti-IFN-gamma mAb. In vitro, both asialo-GM1+ and asialo-GM1- nude mouse splenocytes produced IFN-gamma in response to IL-2.