Latent Psittacosis Infections in Mice

Krumweide and his coworkers,1 Rivers and Berry,2 and Bedson3 have shown that mice are readily infected by intraperitoneal inoculations of the virus of psittacosis derived from birds or from man. Not only is the disease in mice less dangerous to the laboratory workers but the animal is inexpensive and reacts fairly uniformly to the virus. On account of the existence of latent infections parrakeets cannot be used for diagnostic work. The Japanese ricebird is quite expensive although excellent for the study of the elementary bodies and other related problems. In the course of an epidemiologic investigation of psittacosis in aviaries and in connection with diagnostic studies on human infections over 3,500 mice have been injected intraperitoneally with organ suspensions, blood or sputum specimens. The presence of a potent virus is indicated by illness and by typical anatomical lesions and death of the animals in from 4 to 30 days. However, a number of mice may show no signs of disease and yet harbor the virus ...