STUDIES ON HEPATITIS CONTAGIOSA CANIS I. : INFECTION EXPERIMENTS ON DOGS WITH TWO STRAINS OF THE VIRUS AND SEROLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS WITH THE COMPLEMENT-FIXATION TEST

Abstract

1. By using two strains, "YAMAGUCHI" and "MATSUDA", of H.c.c. which were encountered in Sapporo, serial transmission experiments on puppies aged 14〜90 days were conducted. In case of the "MATSUDA" strain, the fatal infection could be transferred to the 3rd passage, however only non-fatal infection occurred in dogs at the 4th passage. On the other hand, in the "YAMAGUCHI" strain the authors could not bring out any fatal infections. 2. The clinical symptoms of puppies were variable even within the same litter. Fatal infection was found to occur in 28.6% (8/28) in the "MATSUDA" strain but 0% in the "YAMAGUCHI" strain. The total infection rates including fatal, severe, mild or inapparent form were 75% (21/28) with the former and 60% (6/10) with the latter strain. 3. Complement-fixing antibody was developed during the period of 12〜15 days after inoculation. There seems to be no relationship among route, dose, severity of the clinical signs or viral strains examined. 4. In order to ascertain the prevalence of this disease in Japan, a survey on distribution of C.F. antibody among dogs from 4 districts was conducted. One hundred and eighty-six dog serum samples out of 374,nearly 50%, reacted positively. There seems not to be very much difference among districts (44〜57%)