Homozygous disruption (-/-) of the interleukin-4 (IL-4) gene did not obviously modify the severity of Sendai virus infection in the highly susceptible 129/J mouse strain. The virus was cleared from the respiratory tract, and potent cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) effectors were present in the cell population recovered by bronchoalveolar lavage. However, the prevalence of virus-specific CTL precursors (p) was consistently diminished in the spleen and regional lymph nodes of the IL-4 -/- mice at day 7 after infection. Also, virus-specific serum immunoglobulin G1 (IgG1) levels were greatly reduced and few IgG1-producing cells were detected in the lymphoid tissue. The effect on IgG1 class switching was to be expected, but the decrease in CTLp numbers has not been observed previously for a virus-specific immune response.