Optic Neuritis, A New Variant of Experimental Encephalomyelitis, A Durable Model for All Seasons, Now In Its Seventieth Year

One of the most enduring models of human disease now celebrates the seventieth anniversary of its publication in The Journal of Experimental Medicine. Thomas Rivers, working at the Hospital of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, along with his colleagues D.H. Sprunt and G.P. Berry, submitted the article entitled, “Observations on Attempts to Produce Disseminated Encephalomyelitis in Monkeys,” on Feb. 21, 1933 (1). Rivers established this model to try to understand what caused neurological reactions to certain viral infections like smallpox and in some circumstances to vaccinations like rabies: the very first sentence of this landmark paper reads, “During convalescence from certain diseases notably smallpox, vaccinia and measles, and during or following vaccination against rabies, an occasional patient develops symptoms and signs referable to the central nervous system.” One of the most devastating complications of vaccination and viral infection is acute optic neuritis (2). In the current issue, Bettelli and colleagues have been able to establish a model of acute optic neuritis, without accompanying inflammation elsewhere in the central nervous system (3).