Impaired Fas-Fas Ligand Interactions Result in Greater Recurrent Herpetic Stromal Keratitis in Mice

Figure 2

Defective expression of both FasL and to a lesser extent Fas results in increased recurrent HSK following UV-reactivation of a latent infection with HSV-1, McKrae strain. Eyes of BALB/c wild-type (), BALB-lpr (), and BALB-gld () mice were infected with 10⁶ pfu of HSV-1, McKrae strain. Six weeks following infection mice were irradiated with UV-B to reactivate the latent infection. Corneal opacity (a) and corneal neovascularization (b) were measured and compared between these strains of mice. Significant virus-induced corneal opacity was observed for BALB-gld at days 14–28 time points when compared to BALB/c controls (–0.001). BALB-lpr mice displayed significantly more opacity than did BALB/c controls at days 21–35 (–0.01). BALB-gld displayed significantly greater neovascularization at days 14–35 (–0.001) and BALB-lpr mice had greater neovascularization at days 14, 21, and 35 (–0.01) than did BALB/c controls.

(a)

(b)