Antibody in Hepatitis Patients Against a Newly Isolated Virus

Abstract

A virus has been recovered in tissue cultures inoculated with the 1951 NIH icterogenic plasma pooL This agent produces cytopathogenic effects in a wide variety of cell cultures, but induces no overt disease in common laboratory animals. It produces inapparent infection in embryonated eggs. Serologic studies have failed to show any relation between the A-l virus and a number of recognized viruses. Heat inactivated sera from normal human beings and animals did not neutralize the virus. Volunteers infected with serum hepatitis virus from 6 different sources have, with a high degree of consistency, developed antibodies against the A-l agent. Sera from patients with infectious hepatitis have not neutralized the virus with comparable regularity.