Chronic infection of the rabbit central nervous system by a slowly growing equine herpesvirus.

The spinal cords of rabbits were chronically infected by a slowly growing horse herpesvirus (a "cytomegalovirus") inoculated directly therein. Virus was recovered from the central nervous systems of some of such animals after more than 1 year. The virus could be reisolated from all the animals killed during the first few weeks after its injection; acute focal meningomyelitis was present with involvement of gray and white matter of the cervical, thoracic, and lumbar levels of the spinal cords of these rabbits, though the nerve cells themselves remained undamaged. Thereafter, reisolation of the virus became sporadic, and no damage to the spinal cord could be histologically discerned even in animals from which the virus was recovered. No paralytic or other clinical effects could be attributed to the infection.