Cytopathogenic Agents Isolated from Patients during an Unusual Epidemic Exanthem

Abstract

A group of agents cytopathogenic for tissues of human origin was isolated from the feces of seven patients during an epidemic exanthem in the late summer of 1951. Isolation of the agents was effected in suspended cell cultures of kidney tissue and subsequent propagation in roller tube cultures of human embryonic skin-muscle, postnatal foreskin or myometrium. Evidence for the development of neutralizing antibodies against the agents was obtained in almost all of the patients whose blood specimens were tested. Cross neutralization tests indicated that the new agents are immunologically closely related. Further study is needed to establish with certainty the etiologic relationship suggested by the data now available between this group of agents and the disease with which they were associated.