Large Amounts of Reactivated Virus in Tears Precedes Recurrent Herpes Stromal Keratitis in Stressed Rabbits Latently Infected with Herpes Simplex Virus

摘要

Aim: Recurrent herpetic stromal keratitis (rHSK), due to an immune response to reactivation of herpes simplex virus (HSV-1), can cause corneal blindness. The development of therapeutic interventions such as drugs and vaccines to decrease rHSK have been hampered by the lack of a small and reliable animal model in which rHSK occurs at a high frequency during HSV-1 latency. The aim of this study is to develop a rabbit model of rHSK in which stress from elevated temperatures increases the frequency of HSV-1 reactivations and rHSK.