Modeling of the effect of trypsin on the interaction of herpes simplex virus-with the human peridontal ligament fibroblast

Abstract

-56- Summary Trypsin and trypsin-like proteases are widely distributed all over the body. They have important role in the activation of many proteolytic systems. It has been suggested that proteases are involved in many important and ambiguously defined biological phenomena such as events in the inflammatory process, neoplastic growth, latency and recurrent infection of viruses. HSV-I (Herpes Simplex Virus I) is capable of remaining in latent form in ectodermal tissues in the body including skin. In our study it is shown that HPdL fibroblasts (Human Peridontal Ligament cells) are well susceptible to HSV-I infection. Trypsin treatment of the cell monolayers increased this susceptibility from a baseline titer of lO`^*33 to 10_Zf,5°.When virus suspension was treated with trypsin, the titer changed down to 10`^ ^. According to these results under the experimentally studied conditions trypsin increased the HPdL susceptibility to HSV-I infection but decreased the infectivity of the viruses under the same conditions. In this way it was tried to analyze cell-virus interaction and then quantize the elements. The changes observed although not significant according to some statistical methods but may be important in biologically significant pathological conditions.