Damage resembles human diseases
Normal mice never develop full-blown atherosclerosis, which makes them imperfect models, Virgin says. Nevertheless, he and his colleagues found lesions that somewhat resembled the early stages of the disease. As with atherosclerosis, the damage was limited to the major arteries. Most importantly, the injured portions began to accumulate fatty plaque.
The vascular injuries also closely mimicked a group of human vascular diseases -- Taskayasu's arteritis, temporal arteritis and Kawasaki's disease -- whose origins have always been a mystery. The early stages of these diseases are marked by rashes and fever, symptoms typical of viral infection. "If it turns out that viruses cause these diseases in humans, few physicians would be surprised," says co-researcher Samuel H. Speck, Ph.D., an associate professor of pathology and molecular microbiology. "The link between viruses and atherosclerosis is much more controversial."
Intriguingly, infections in newborn mice led to fatal vascular disease when the
animals were well into adulthood. "The infection doesn't cause vascular disease
immediately, but it seems to set the whole process in motion," Virgin says.
"This may suggest a model for how atherosclerosis and other vascular diseases
progress in humans." The virus had little effect on healthy adult mice but did
cause severe vascular disease in adult mice with compromised immune systems.
At first, Virgin, Speck and colleagues had no intention of studying vascular
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Contact: Linda Sage
sage@medicine.wustl.edu
314-286-0119
Washington University in St. Louis
1-Mar-1998