Blocking Factors in Sspe Patients

Since the description of a case with "diffuse encephalitis with sclerosing inflammation of the hemisphere white matter" by Bodechtel and Guttman (1), there have been numerous reports that have indicated that measles virus is associated with this disease. Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE) I occurs mostly in children and young adults as a slow progressive inflammatory disorder of the central nervous system (2). There have been reports that the SSPE virus is not identical (3, 4) to the wild or attenuated strain of the measles virus. One characteristic laboratory finding in clinical cases of SSPE has been the presence of high concentration of measles antibody levels in the serum and spinal fluid of nearly all known cases of this progressive neurological disease (5, 6). Still, the presence of these high levels of humoral antibody does not alter the course of the disease in patients with SSPE. Horta-Barbosa et al. (7) have isolated the measles virus in mixed cultures of lymph node cells and HeLa cells and identified it by hemagglutination inhibition, immunofluorescence, and neutralization tests. Dayan and Stokes (8) identified measles virus antigen by immunofluorescence in cells from cerebrospinal fluid in four patients with SSPE. Immunologic abnormalities have been reported (9, 11) in patients with SSPE. Saunders et al. (12) studied the in vitro response of an 8~i-year old boy with SSPE to measles antigen and found specific immunocompetent lymphocytes in the patient and postulated that the destructive interaction between such lymphocytes and host cells in the brain may lead to SSPE. Mizutani et al. (13) confirmed the presence of cellular immunity to measles antigen in a 9-year old girl with SSPE, using skin testing and macrophage migration inhibition as an index. On the other hand, Moulias et al. (14) tested 20 cases of SSPE and found that none of them responded to measles antigen as judged by blastic transformation and leukocyte migration tests. Lischner et al. (15)