Borna disease virus-induced retinouveitis treated with immunosuppressive drugs.

Borna disease occurs naturally in horses and sheep and causes an encephalomyelitis which is fatal. Little is known about the etiologic agent. There is evidence, however, that this neutrotropic virus belongs to the conventional enveloped RNA viruses. Experimentally infected rabbits exhibited a highly reproducible multifocal retinochoroidopathy. Clinical, histologic, as well as virologic results suggested that immunologic events gave rise to the characteristic clinical, histologic, as well as virologic results suggested that immunologic events gave rise to the characteristic clinical expression of the disease. To investigate possible immunpathologic factors, infected rabbits were treated with immunosuppressive drugs. As compared with controls three outstanding features were observed in the treated group: (1) The time interval between infection and the occurrence of inflammatory ocular foci was considerably prolonged; (2) confluency of retinal lesions was not noted in the early course of the disease; and (3) a lack of ocular lesions or a nonprogression over several days, never observed in controls, occurred in a small percentage of treated animals. These observations indicate that the clinical course of virus-induced inflammatory lesions of the retina and choroid can be changed by treatment with immunosuppressive drugs. It can be assumed that the appearance of the individual fundus lesion depends on the immuno-logic status of the infected host.