title: Herpesvirus delivery to the murine respiratory tract.
abstract: Herpesvirus transmission is sporadic, and infection may be asymptomatic or present only with secondary lesions after dissemination. Consequently host entry remains ill-understood. Experimental infections can be informative, but depend on inoculations that are inherently artificial and so need validation. Mice are a widely used experimental host. Alert mice inhale readily small (5 μl) liquid volumes, and Indian ink, luciferase or radiolabel delivered thus distributed to the nasopharynx and oropharynx. Murid Herpesvirus-4 or Herpes simplex virus type 1 delivered thus infected only the nose, arguing that host entry is nasal rather than oral. Marker or virus delivery to the lung depended on general anesthesia and a large inoculum volume (30 μl), and so needs further validation of physiological relevance. While lungs could be infected at lower doses than the upper respiratory tract, tracking experiments showed that nasal inocula pass mostly into the oropharynx, even when restricted to 1 μl. Thus, the relative inefficiency of experimental upper respiratory tract infection was attributable to limited liquid retention in this site. Nonetheless low volume intranasal delivery to alert mice provides a convenient way to model experimentally an apparently natural mode of herpesvirus host entry.
authors.affiliation: Sir Albert Sakzewski Virus Research Centre, Queensland Children's Medical Research Institute and Australian Infectious Disease Research Centre, University of Queensland and Royal Children's Hospital, Brisbane, Queensland 4029, Australia.
authors.forename: Cindy S E
authors.initials: CS
authors.lastname: Tan
authors.affiliation: Division of Virology, Department of Pathology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 2QQ, UK.
authors.forename: Bruno
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Frederico
authors.affiliation: Sir Albert Sakzewski Virus Research Centre, Queensland Children's Medical Research Institute and Australian Infectious Disease Research Centre, University of Queensland and Royal Children's Hospital, Brisbane, Queensland 4029, Australia; Division of Virology, Department of Pathology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 2QQ, UK. Electronic address: p.stevenson@uq.edu.au.
authors.forename: Philip G
authors.initials: PG
authors.lastname: Stevenson
mesh_terms: D000281:Administration, Intranasal; D000818:Animals; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D018259:Herpesvirus 1, Human / Q000254:growth & development* / Q000302:isolation & purification; D008807:Mice, Inbred BALB C; D008810:Mice, Inbred C57BL; D012137:Respiratory System / Q000821:virology*; D018144:Rhadinovirus / Q000254:growth & development* / Q000302:isolation & purification
keywords: Herpesvirus; In vivo; Infection; Inoculation; Mouse