Cultivation of a Novel Type of Common-cold Virus in Organ Cultures

Abstract

Volunteers developed colds after the intranasal inoculation of secretions derived from a boy with a common cold. Colds developed, although the secretions were passed through a filter of A.P.D. 0.59 μ and the volunteers were treated with demethylchlortetracycline. No colds developed if the washings were treated with ether. The virus thus demonstrated would not grow in tissue cultures and eggs which would support the multiplication of known viruses of the upper respiratory tract. It multiplied and was serially propagated in organ cultures of human foetal tracheal epithelium. The colds produced by washings and tissue cultures were clinically similar, and in the aggregate distinct, from those produced by M rhinoviruses. Sera of infected volunteers were tested by haemagglutination-inhibition and complement-fixation tests ; a small proportion showed slight rises against influenza C and Sendai viruses. Infection of organ cultures with B814 was detected with difficulty by a decline in ciliary activity and by degenerative changes in sections of the tissue, but there was a tenfold to a hundredfold reduction in titre on challenge of the cultures with other viruses—virus interference. Other viruses distinct from B814 have been recognized and similarly cultivated, including uncharacterized ether-stable viruses which may be rhinoviruses. © 1965, British Medical Journal Publishing Group. All rights reserved.