[Inframunicipality distribution of lung cancer in the urban area of Grenoble].

Background: Mapping a Cancer Atlas for the urban area of Grenoble revealed spatial distribution in the incidence of lung cancer among males at municipality level. Thus, our goal in this work was to use a new finer spatial scale to find out whether or not observed spatial variations might mask intramunicipality spatial variations.

Methods: The use of a Bayesian smoothing approach allowed us to overcome problems related to the very small inframunicipality scale and to take into account the spatial autocorrelation existing between neighbouring units.

The effect of Theiler's murine encephalomyelitis virus (TMEV) VP1 carboxyl region on the virus-induced central nervous system disease.

Members of the Theiler's murine encephalomyelitis virus GDVII subgroup, which includes GDVII strain, are highly neurovirulent and induce a rapidly fatal polioencephalomyelitis. By contrast, Theiler's original subgroup members, which includes DA strain, are not as neurovirulent, and produce a chronic, demyelinating disease with virus persistence. We investigated the importance of the carboxyl region of the capsid protein VP1 in TMEV-induced disease since a trypsin-cleavable immunodominant neutralization epitope is situated in the VP1 carboxyl region, and since this region is believed to lie adjacent to the putative receptor binding site.

A single amino acid change determines persistence of a chimeric Theiler's virus.

The DA strain of Theiler's virus persists in the central nervous system of mice and causes chronic inflammation and demyelination. On the other hand, the GDVII strain causes an acute encephalitis and does not persist in surviving animals. Series of recombinants between infectious cDNA clones of the genomes of DA and GDVII viruses have been constructed.

Chimeric cDNA studies of Theiler's murine encephalomyelitis virus neurovirulence.

Strain GDVII and other members of the GDVII subgroup of Theiler's murine encephalomyelitis virus are highly neurovirulent and rapidly fatal, while strain DA and other members of the TO subgroup produce a chronic, demyelinating disease. GDVII/DA chimeric cDNA studies suggest that a major neurovirulence determinant is within the GDVII 1B through 1D capsid protein coding region, although the additional presence of upstream GDVII sequences, including the 5' untranslated region, contributes to full neurovirulence. Our studies indicate that there are limitations in precisely delineating neurovirulence determinants with chimeric cDNAs between evolutionarily diverged viruses, such as GDVII and DA.