Histopathological changes in sarcolemma and sarcoplasm in Coxsackie virus infection.

Between 1948 and 1950, Dalldorf and Sickles (1948), Dalldorf and others (1949), Dalldorf (1950), and Sickles and Dalldorf (1949) reported a previously unidentified virus in the faeces of children with the symptoms of acute anterior poliomyelitis. This virus has been named Coxsackie or C.-virus, and many authors (Magnus, 1949; Kaplan and Melnick, 1951; Melnick, 1947, 1950a, 1950b; Melnick and Godman, 1952; Melnick and Horstmann, 1947; Melnick and Kraft, 1950; Melnick and Ledinko, 1950; Melnick and various others, 1949, 1950a, 1950b) have contributed towards the elucidation of its epidemiology and serology. Moreover, in acute anterior poliomyelitis the virus could be shown in Bornholm disease (myalgia epidemica; Sylvest, 1933) and in certain forms of gastroenteritis. Two reports on the symptomatology of pure Coxsackie virus infection appeared in 1950. Shaw and others (1950) described a laboratory infection in six assistants engaged on the isolation of C.-virus. The symptoms were raised temperature, feeling of general weakness, lack of appetite, pains in the throat, single instances with stiffness of the neck, and in some cases diarrhoea, and 2 days later pains localized in the muscles of the abdomen, thorax, and extremities. Hueber and others (1951) reported the appearance of an epidemic C.-virus infection. The C.-virus has since been isolated during epidemics in Switzerland (Thelin and Wirth, 1951), and during a typical outbreak of Bornholm disease in England and Scotland (Brown, Liddle, and Tobin, 1952; Davies and Warin, 1951). Up till now, fourteen antigenically different strains of varying toxicity and tissue affinity have been isolated. One strain (Texas) has shown a decided affinity for the striated skeletal musculature and for the connective tissue. The histopathological changes in the muscles during a C.-virus infection in mice were shortly described by Strandberg (1952) and were later reported by Godman and others (1952). The present investigations have been carried out to ascertain whether the histopathological changes in the muscles in C.-virus infection are comparable with the muscular dystrophies of central origin (poliomyelitis, sclerosis lateralis amyotrophica, etc.) or with the genuine muscular dystrophies (polymyositis, dermatomyositis, dystrophia musculorum progressiva, etc.).