An Outbreak of Pharyngoconjunctival Fever due to Adenovirus Type 3

Abstract

An epidemic of pharyngoconjunctival fever due to adenovirus type 3 occurred among children in a primary school in Japan during summer months of 1964. The etiologic diagnosis of the epidemic was readily made by virus isolation and serologic tests on patients. Adenovirus type 3 was isolated in HeLa cell cultures from 55% of 52 patients, and serologic evidence for type 3 virus infection was obtained in 93% of 54 patients which were tested for complement-fixing, neutralizing, and hemagglutination-inhibiting antibodies. The HI test was found to be as useful in the serologic diagnosis of the serotype as the NT test. It is evident that for the routine use, the HI test is more advantageous than NT test as the latter is more laborious and time consuming. The fact that a strain recovered in this epidemic gave higher HI titers than the prototype strain, when used as the antigen in HI tests with sera of patients in this epidemic indicates the desirability of selecting an appropriate virus strain for preparation of the antigen for HI test in serological diagnosis of patients.