Allopurinol (4-hydroxypyrazolo [3,4-d] (Fig. 1). The latter are incorporated into RNA. This sequence is identical to that in various pathogenic leishmania, both the extracellular and intracellular forms (5, 11), and in the culture (3) and bloodstream forms of the African trypanosomes (W. R. Fish, D. L. Looker, J. J. Marr, and R. L. Berens, manuscript in preparation). Other investigators subsequently reported that HPP undergoes the same metabolic conversions in several T. cruzi strains and that this drug, when given intraperitoneally, results in clinical cures of T. cruzi-infected mice (1, 2).In the present study we demonstrated that the metabolism of HPP in both the intracellular and bloodstream forms of T. cruzi is identical to that previously reported for the culture forms and that this drug will eradicate T. cruzi infections from cultured cells. For drug treatment studies a confluent, infected (-1% infection) culture in a 75-cm2 plastic flask was split by trypsin digestion into six cultures which were placed in replicate 25-cm2 flasks. Cells were cultured for 24 h at 37°C in Eagle minimal essential medium (MEM) containing 10o heat-inactivated fetal calf serum (FCS). The percent infection was then determined for each flask by counting the number of infected and noninfected cells found in 20 fields (at 200x magnification with an Olympus IMT inverted phase-contrast microscope). A confluent culture normally had an average of 127 ± 15 cells per field. After the percent infection was determined, the six culture flasks were divided randomly into two sets of three. The medium of one set (drug set) was replaced with MEM containing 2% FCS plus 187 ,uM HPP (25 ,g/ml). The medium of the other set (control set) was replaced with the same medium without HPP. Both sets of flasks were then placed at 31°C and incubated for 1 week. During this period, the medium was replaced every 48 h. At the end of this period, the average percent infection was determined for the treated and control sets. One-