Herpesvirus saimiri. V. Further Evidence to Consider This Virus as the Etiological Agent of a Lethal Disease in Primates Which Resembles a Malignant Lymphoma

Summary

Herpesvirus saimiri, a new herpesvirus indigenous to the squirrel monkey (Saimiri sciureus), with the ability to induce malignant lymphoma in nonhuman primates has been reisolated from kidney tissue cultures prepared from the affected animals at the terminal stage of disease. The purity of the reisolated H. saimiri was determined by filtration, reinoculation in susceptible animals, and by electron microscopy. These studies indicate that H. saimiri fulfills Koch's postulates for the experimentally induced lethal disease characterized histologically as a type of malignant lymphoma in nonhuman primates.