Mechanism of recovery from systemic herpes simplex virus infection. I. Comparative effectiveness of antibody and reconstitution of immune spleen cells on immunosuppressed mice.

The role of cellular immunity, humoral antibody, and interferon in recovery from primary systemic infection in mice due to herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) was studied. Immunosuppression by three methods--each of which was sufficient to suppress humoral and cellular immunity--markedly potentiated primary systemic HSV-1 infection. Immunosuppressed mice did not form neutralizing antibody to HSV-1, but passive transfer of physiologic amounts of neutralizing antibody as late as day 6 after infection exerted a protective effect. Passive transfer of 10(8) immune spleen cells on day 3 after infection was only partially protective and did not thereafter reverse the effect of X-irradiation on HSV-1 infection. Furthermore, mice that received immune cells appeared to make sufficient antibody to explain the protective effect of the transferred cells. These results suggest that antibody to HSV-1 has a critical role in promoting recovery from primary infection in this model. The findings neither favor nor exclude a defensive role for immune cells in this experimental primary HSV-1 infection.