Immune response of hamsters to experimental central nervous system infection with measles virus.

Forty-two 21-day-old Syrian golden hamsters were inoculated intracerebrally with a hamster-adapted Mantooth strain of measles virus. For the duration of the experiment, the animals demonstrated measles virus infection of the central nervous system documented by histology and detection of measles antigen by fluorescent antibody staining. The lymphocyte-rosetting response to infection in the hamster was monitored for 25 days after inoculation utilizing a human cell line (HEp-2) persistently infected with the hamster-adapted measles virus. The rosetting response reached a peak on the third day after virus inoculation and then declined to a constant low level by the tenth day. This decline corresponded to the peak of the humoral immune response as measured by the measles hemagglutination-inhibition titer. The rosetting response-appears in this model to be a response to the acute phase of infection.