Immunological Tolerance, Infective Tolerance and Virus-induced Neoplastic Transformation

Abstract

THE term ‘immunological tolerance’ arose in connexion with antigens which failed to induce antibody production in the adult animal as a result of previous experience with the specific antigen pre- or post-natally. It has been reported¹ that mice congenitally infected with the virus of lymphocytic choriomeningitis may develop a persistent viræmia unaccompanied by antibody formation, and are thus immunologically tolerant. Such mice are unaffected by the intracerebral inoculation of the virus of lymphocytic choriomeningitis, otherwise fatal, and are thus also ‘infectively tolerant’. It has, therefore, been suggested² that lymphocytic choriomeningitis—the disease induced by the inoculation of virus in previously uninfected mice—must be the result of an immunological response of the intolerant host, that is, of ‘immunological conflict’² rather than simple destructive interaction of virus and cell.