Hepatitis in marmosets: induction of disease with coded specimens from a human volunteer study.

Marmosets inoculated with plasma from three early acute hepatitis patients developed hepatitis 30 to 40 days later. Other groups of marmosets receiving preinfection plasmas from the same patients showed no evidence of hepatitis in this experiment. It is, therefore, most probable that hepatitis in marmosets represented transmission of human disease rather than activation of latent "marmoset hepatitis."