Two lots of 20 young male guinea pigs were inoculated subcutaneously in the tarsi with 10(4) amastigotes of Leishmania braziliensis braziliensis or L. b. guyanensis to study the susceptibility of this Neotropical hystricomorph rodent the autochthonous parasites. Almost 50% of the animals showed lesions in the inoculation site and had parasitizations that were infective to hamsters, as shown by inoculating homogenates of the dermal lesion, of the spleen, of the liver, and of the nasal mucosa into hamsters at 20, 40, 60, and 120 days after inoculation of the guinea pig. Smears of the above organs showed the presence of amastigotes. Parasites inoculated into the tarsi were detected early in the skin, spleen, and liver of the guinea pig host. Blood cultures made by cardiopuncture on sacrifice of the guinea pigs were uniformly negative. The nasal mucosa of nearly all animals positive in the skin or viscera was invaded early by the parasites, although with greater frequency between 60 and 120 days post-inoculation. The use of this model for the study of mucocutaneous parasitism by L. braziliensis is discussed, together with the phenomena of parasitism at a distance from the inoculation site, the temperature of the body regions affected, and the possible genetic influence on susceptibility of the guinea pig to L. braziliensis.
Migration and colonization of the oesophagus byThe vectorial capacity of any leishmaniasis vector depends not only on its ability to develop and harbour parasites in its intestine but also the colonization of the foregut by infective promastigotes after a complete digestion of the infective bloodmeal. Also, an infected fly should be able to locate, bite and transmit the parasites to a new reservoir or host. Hence, both biochemical and physiological mechanisms might be expected to control host-seeking behaviour and parasite development in a vector, respectively. In the study of vector capacity two assumptions are widely accepted: firstly, at least for haematophagous Diptera, host seeking is stopped by a full bloodmeal (Klowden 1990) and, secondly, that a full infecting bloodmeal is sufficient for an appropriate sand fly vector to become infective. However, recent observations prompted us to revisit these assumptions in sand flies. Firstly, in two geographically separated areas in Colombia and Venezuela, hungry gravid and semi-gravid Lutzomyia evansi females were caught indoors hence, displaying an active host-seeking behaviour (Montoya-Lerma 1996, M Oviedo, pers. obs.). Secondly, our studies on the biology of Lu. evansi suggest that this sand fly has a very short life expectancy in nature (Oviedo et al. 1995, Montoya-Lerma et al. 1998 and finally, Lu. evansi could experimentally harbour and develop Leishmania mexicana but parasites did not reach its oesophagus (unpublished data). Since Lu. evansi has been reported coexisting in an area where L. mexicana occurs, all of these observations prompted us to investigate whether a second blood-meal taken by Lu. evansi, subsequent to an infective one, may influence the oesophageal colonization of L. mexicana and related parasites.For experimental and practical reasons, Syrian hamsters were infected either with one of two WHO L. mexicana reference strains (i.e. L. amazonensis IFLA/BR/67/PHB and L. mexicana MHOM/VE/ 72/AZV) and used as source of parasites. Hamsters were anaesthetised and its posterior footpad introduced, for approximately 20 min, inside a glass devise, containing starved bred female Lu. evansi. Fed flies were maintained in darkness, under constant conditions (26ºC and 85% RH). Putatively infected females were fed with sucrose as food source and dissected, to evaluate parasite development in their gut, at 24 h intervals from 72 h until 168 h post-infection. Afterwards, surviving females were fed on an uninfected hamster. Refed flies were kept as indicated above, receiving sucrose solution. After 72 h and during seven days, dissections were continued, following the same 24 h schedule.Results showed that susceptibility of Lu. evansi to infection ranged between 29.4% (n= 119) and 21.7% (n= 147) to L. mexicana and L. amazonensis, respectively. The typical suprapylarian development was exhibited though presence of free flagel-
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