The Black Swiss colony was maintained as a closed colony and the Sprague Dawley colony occasionally received infusions of germfree breeders. The Foundation Colony was maintained as a strict defined flora colony with aerobic and anaerobic bacteriological testing conducted weekly by Taconic's laboratory. Mouse parvovirus infections are generally apathogenic but some parvovirus strains have experimentally induced minor pathogenesis. Parvovirus positive mice rarely demonstrate clinical signs of the disease however Mouse Parvovirus can negatively impact research studies. Parvoviruses have a predilection for mitotically active cells which can result in the distortion of biologic responses dependant on cell proliferation.
Parvoviruses can also cause the death of cell cultures produced from an infected mouse.
Positives in this screen are retested by IFA against MPV antigen. If the second IFA is positive, the antibody response is interpreted as MPV positive. As soon as these results were received, all shipments from IBU 15 were suspended. Taconic made the decision to notify all clients who received mice from IBU 15 during the prior month about the potential problem. The difference in interpretation of test results for the two putative positive samples was unexplained.