A survey on the effect of steroid hormone on type C virus production from cultured murine cells

Dexamethasone stimulates type C virus production induced by iododeoxyuridine (IdUrd) from several murine cell lines: uninfected BALB cells, virally transformed nonproducer K-BALB cells, mouse neuroblastoma N-4 cells, and rat tumor XC cells. Dexamethasone also stimulates virus production from BALB cells newly infected by some murine leukemia or leukemia sarcoma viruses, from a murine myelogenous leukemic cell line (M-1) producing type C virus, from K-BALB(l) cells (K-BALB producing cells previously induced by IdUrd), and from K-BALB cells rescued by Rauscher leukemia virus. However, this stimulatory effect is not universal, since we observed that dexamethasone did not stimulate virus production from BALB cells newly infected by B-tropic virus, from S2CL3 cells producing N-tropic virus (a clone of spontaneously transformed BALB cells), from virus producing normal rat kidney cells, and from a mouse adrenal gland tumor Y-1 cell line chronically producing type C virus. Some estrogenic hormones that do not have any stimulatory effect on virus production from BALB or K-BALB cells induced by IdUrd stimulate virus production from normal rat kidney cells induced by IdUrd. When there is no stimulation of virus production in a cell system by steroid hormones, very often there is some inhibitory activity. Furthermore, we observed that in JLSV10 cells chronically producing Rauscher leukemia virus and in K-BALB cells newly infected by Rauscher leukemia virus, virus production is enhanced by dexamethasone when the cells are still producing a low titer of virus but is not enhanced when the cells are producing a high titer of virus.