Coxsackievirus

In general, group A coxsackieviruses tend to infect the skin and mucous membranes, causing herpangina; acute hemorrhagic conjunctivitis; and hand, foot, and mouth disease.

Earlier work Dalldorf had done in monkeys suggested that fluid collected from a nonpolio virus preparation could protect against the crippling effects of polio.

Using newborn mice as a vehicle, Dalldorf attempted to isolate such protective viruses from the feces of polio patients.

[14][15][16][17] The coxsackieviruses subsequently were found to cause a variety of infections, including epidemic pleurodynia (Bornholm disease), and were subdivided into groups A and B based on their pathology in newborn mice.

(Coxsackie A virus causes paralysis and death of the mice, with extensive skeletal muscle necrosis; Coxsackie B causes less severe infection in the mice, but with damage to more organ systems, such as heart, brain, liver, pancreas, and skeletal muscles.)

The discovery of the coxsackieviruses stimulated many virologists to use this system, and ultimately resulted in the isolation of a large number of so-called "enteric" viruses from the gastrointestinal tract that were unrelated to poliovirus, and some of which were oncogenic (cancer-causing).

The discovery of the coxsackieviruses yielded further evidence that viruses can sometimes interfere with each other's growth and replication within a host animal.