Relationship between Virion Incidence and Pathological Stage in Virus-induced Leukaemia

SIMILARITIES between leukaemia in mouse and man, together with the unequivocal viral aetiology of the murine disease, have led to the study of murine leukaemia as a model for the human disease. Levine and his associates 1 reported a positive correlation between the clinical status of leukaemic patients and the incidence of virus-like particles in their plasma. For future aetiological investigations it seemed necessary to corroborate this finding in a system of known aetiology. Detection of virions by electron microscopy, as well as the isolation of infectious leukaemia virus before development of clinical leukaemia, has been repeatedly demonstrated in mice 2 . Quantitative work on the relationship between virions and the stage of leukaemogenesis has not, however, been reported.