Haemorrhagic fever virus with renal syndrome in small rodents in Czechoslovakia.

The antigen of haemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS) was detected in the lungs of the following free-living small rodents trapped in different localities in Eastern Slovakia: Clethrionomys glareolus (2 positive samples of 7), Apodemus flavicollis (1 sample of 24) and Apodemus agrarius (7 positive samples of 66). The virus was first identified by indirect fluorescent antibody (FA) staining using human convalescent serum from a case of epidemic nephropathy (NE) of Scandinavia. The lung suspensions selected according to positive immunofluorescence were inoculated by intramuscular (i.m.) route into suckling rats; the antigen prepared from the lungs of these rats by sucrose-acetone extraction reacted with the prototype human serum in complement-fixation (CF) reaction. The results of the latter assay were in good agreement with those of the indirect FA staining.