Effects of interferon alpha on performance in man: a preliminary report.

The effects of three doses of interferon alpha (1.5 Mu, 0.5 Mu and 0.1 Mu) on performance were studied. The injection of 1.5 Mu IFN produced symptoms and performance changes which closely resembled those found in volunteers with influenza. Specifically, volunteers were slower at responding when they were uncertain when a target stimulus would appear, but were not impaired on a pursuit tracking task or syntactic reasoning task. The results suggest that interferon-induced changes in CNS function provide a plausible explanation for the selective effects of influenza on performance.