Isolation from Man of "Avian Infectious Bronchitis Virus-like" Viruses (Coronaviruses) similar to 229E Virus, with Some Epidemiological Observations

Abstract

With standard tissue culture techniques it has been possible to determine the etiologic agent of only 20%~35% of upper respiratory illnesses in adults However, in 1965 Tyrrell and Bynoe reported successful attempts to increase the efficiency of virus recovery from patients with upper respiratory tract illness using human embryonic tracheal and nasal organ cultures. They found that organ cultures were more sensitive than conventional tissue cultures for isolation of some rhinoviruses; in addition, they isolated an ether-labile virus, strain B814, which could be grown only in organ culture and which produced common cold-like illnesses in volunteers In 1966, Hamre and Procknow described the recovery of a new virus, using standard tissue culture techniques, from 5 students, 4 of whom had an upper respiratory tract illness The prototype strain, 229, was ether-labile, possessed an RNA core, measured approximately 89 mJ.L, and yet was apparently unrelated to any of the myxo- viruses of man. In 1967, we described the isolation of 6 new ether-labile viruses (hereafter referred to as National Institutes of Health organ culture [NIH a.c.] viruses) from patients with upper respiratory illnesses; these agents could be