Resistance to Viral Infection: Interferon

Progress in the treatment of infectious disease has advanced with remarkable speed and efficiency in the last 20 years. With the advent of antibiotic therapy, many of the bacterial infections which were hitherto not easily managed have been controlled with a resultant decrease in mortality and morbidity. As the number and the severity of bacterial diseases decrease, viral infections have become increasingly more important clinically, particularly because an effective antiviral agent has not been developed, but also because the specific viral etiology of an increasing number of clinical conditions has been elucidated. In the past, most efforts aimed at containing virus disease have been through the institution of preventive measures such as immunization with killed virus particles or the use of attenuated live virus which produced mild or subclinical infections. Passive immunity with pooled sera or one of their fractions has also provided some degree of protection or modification of