The diagnostics and treatment of tropical diseasesStitt, E. R. (Edward Rhodes)
Science
The diagnostics and treatment of tropical diseases
Stitt, E. R. (Edward Rhodes)
Tropical medicine
When the tsetse fly, _Glossina palpalis_, feeds on a man in whose
peripheral circulation there are normal type trypanosomes we
have an accumulation of such forms in the middle and posterior
portions of the gut. From the eighth to the eighteenth day long,
slender forms develop and pass forward into the proventriculus.
None of the intestinal forms can cause infection when injected
into animals. These proventricular types work their way into the
salivary ducts and thence into the salivary glands, where further
development takes place. Here we have shorter forms developing,
which are similar in morphology to the normal blood type. It is at
this stage that the fly becomes infective by the passing of these
trypanosomes down the salivary ducts and through the channel in the
hypopharynx to the subcutaneous tissues of the person bitten. High
temperatures, 75 to 85°F., are favorable to development, while low
temperatures, 60 to 70°F., are inimical to development, but do not
kill the ingested trypanosomes. This explains the long period which
at times elapses before a fly becomes infective. Under favorable
conditions a fly becomes infective in twenty to thirty-four days
and remains infective the rest of its life, up to 185 days. The
infection is not transmitted to the pupa. This is an inoculative,
cyclical or indirect type of infection. It is usually considered
that a tsetse fly whose proboscis has just been contaminated with
trypanosome blood is capable of transferring the infection for a
few hours. This would be a mechanical or direct method of infection
and such power for infection only lasts for a few hours.
There are other groups of trypanosomes, not important for man,
in which the cyclical development does not include the salivary
glands. In the _T. pecorum_ group of small monomorphic trypanosomes
development takes place only in intestines and proboscis, while in
the _T. vivax_ group this occurs in the proboscis alone.
[Illustration: FIG. 28.—_Glossina morsitans_ before and after
feeding. Lateral view. (From Doflein after Austin.) MacNeal.]
When tsetse flies feed on animals infected with trypanosomes only
from 2 to 6% become infective. Again, it has been shown that where
the wild animals on which tsetse flies feed may show an infection
of from 16 to 50% yet not more than 2 out of every 1000 tsetse
flies, caught and tried out on susceptible animals, show themselves
infective.
Both of the human trypanosomes of Africa have been cultured by
using the N.N.N. medium in which rat’s blood was substituted for
that of the rabbit. Human blood will also serve as a substitute.
Growth however is not constant.
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