Effects of bovine parainfluenza-3 virus on phagocytosis and phagosome-lysosome fusion of cultured bovine alveolar macrophages.

Bovine parainfluenza-3 virus (PI-3V) replicated in cultured bovine alveolar macrophages (BAM) in vitro. Cytopathic changes included spindle cell and giant cell formation, diffuse cell lysis, and cellular detachment progressing to total destruction of the monolayer. Direct immunofluorescent microscopy revealed viral antigen in greater than 90% of BAM on post-inoculation day (PID) 3. Virus titers in culture supernatants increased by a factor of 1.6 X 10(6) TCID50 by PID 6. Candida glabrata was phagocytized by a similar proportion of glass-adherent PI-3V-infected and sham-inoculated control BAM. However, when the number of glass-adherent cells available for assay was taken into account (normalization), the percentage of phagocytic PI-3V-infected BAM was significantly lower than that of the control cells at PID 5 and 7 (P less than 0.01). Phagosome-lysosome fusion assays had a marked reduction of fusion activity in PI-3V-infected BAM as compared with that of control BAM. Proportions of infected cells that showed fusion were approximately 50% of that of the control cells at PID 4 and 6 (P less than 0.05). Normalization of these values reduced the fusion rate of PI-3V-infected BAM to 34% of that of control BAM (P less than 0.01).