An animal model of virus-induced autism: Borna disease virus infection of the neonatal rat

A number of neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism, have been associated with early brain damage following exposure to unfavorable environmental factors (Trottier et al., 1999; Lord et al., 2000). Because the pathogenesis of autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) appears to represent a continuum of unfolding events in which primary and secondary mechanisms are intimately interwoven, it is extremely difficult to draw any meaningful conclusions about the causative relationship between the often remote etiology (i.e., early brain injury) and the end-point disease phenotypes (Yeung-Courchesne and Courchesne, 1997). Thus, pathogenic treatments of early injury are lacking and have to be limited to the amelioration of secondary alterations expressed as signs and symptoms of disease (Baren, 1999; Tsai, 1999).