Abstract
Summary and conclusions
The effects of prolonged ingestion of alcohol upon the course and severity of acute experimental trypanosomal myocarditis in young male C3H mice were studied. Twenty-four mice were fed a liquid control diet. After 65 days, 12 of these animals were inoculated with 9,000 Trypanosoma cruzi (Colombian). Twenty-four mice were fed a similar diet except that 1/7 of its calories were derived from ethanol, isocalorically substituted for sucrose. Half of these animals were infected after 65 days. Mice were weighed, and parasites in blood smears were counted once weekly. After 114 days on the diets, the surviving animals were sacrificed. The uninfected animals maintained their weight normally. The ethanol-fed animals differed from their controls by having slightly but significantly heavier hearts (4% of heart weight and 9% of heart weight/body weight ratio). Three of 12 ethanol-fed animals died early. The infected animals lost weight on either diet and showed a mortality of 17/24 irrespective of diet. Parasitemia was not affected by ethanol. Two of 9 animals of the ethanol-fed group who died early, died on day 43 of the infection in congestive heart failure with markedly dilated hearts and ascites, a picture not seen in other mice of this series. The heart weight of the infected, ethanol-fed mice exceeded that of the infected controls by 9%, and the heart weight/ body weight ratio by 14%; neither difference was statistically significant. Histopathologic examination suggested more inflammation, necrosis and parasites in the myocardium of ethanol-fed animals. It is concluded that chronically administered dietary alcohol may increase heart weight and may, at least in some animals, enhance the effects of acute Chagasic myocarditis.
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