FIG 4.

Statin treatment suppresses chronic MHV68 infection following inoculation by the intraperitoneal (I.P.) route. (A) Experimental design of acute infection studies. BL6 mice were treated with 20 mg/kg lovastatin or the ethanol carrier via intraperitoneal injection beginning at 4 days prior to infection. Treatment was continued every 2 days throughout the remainder of the experiment. On day 0 the mice were infected intranasally with 500 PFU of wild-type MHV68. (B) Lung MHV68 titers at 7 days postinfection. Each symbol represents the result for an individual animal. (C to H) BL6 mice were infected with 100 to 1,000 PFU of MHV68 via intraperitoneal injection and treated every other day with 20 mg/kg lovastatin beginning at 10 days postinfection (panel G shows the experimental design). At 21 days postinfection, the frequency of MHV68 reactivation (C, E) or MHV68 DNA-positive cells (D, F) in splenocytes (C, D) or peritoneal exudate cells (PEC) (E, F) was determined. (H) The absolute number of latently infected peritoneal cells in the indicated groups. Prior to the analyses, splenocytes and peritoneal cells from 4 to 5 mice/group in each experiment were pooled. Data from 2 to 3 independent experiments were pooled.