Abstract
Kofoid and McCulloch 1 described Trypanosoma triatomae from the digestive tract of Triatoma protracta from San Diego, California. Its morphological resemblance to Trypanosoma cruzi from Triatoma megista, the insect vector of Brazilian human trypanosomiasis, was noted, but failure to find the trypanosome in the blood of the wood rat (Neotoma fuscipes macrotis) in whose nests infected Triatoma were taken, and the failure to infect young white rats by permitting infected bugs to feed upon them, led to the tentative opinion that the trypanosomes of the 2 species of bugs might not be identical. Findings here reported establish the identity of T. triatomae of California with T. cruzi of Brazil.
Examination of the blood of wood rats (Neotoma fuscipes annectens) from the vicinity of Berkeley, California, has shown them to harbor a trypanosome. This parasite, however, has the morphology of T. lewisi, the non-pathogenic trypanosome of the Norway rat. Ceratophyllus fasciatus, the common rat flea, which infests both the nests and bodies of the wood rats, has been found to contain trypanosomes in developmental stages, identical with those described by Minchin and Thomson 2 for T. lewisi. Triatoma protracta also lives in the nests of wood rats from this vicinity, but examinations of its digestive tract have never revealed trypanosomes in any stage of development. Experimental feeding of these bugs on wood rats naturally infected with T. lewisi, from the region of Berkeley has in 22 cases given only negative results.
The dilemma thus presented has been at least partially solved by the experimental infection of young albino rats of the Norway-albino hybrid strain in our stock by the intraperitoneal injection of the intestinal contents of a Triatoma protracta infected with T. cruzi (= T. triatomae) from San Diego.
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