American trypanosomiasis in British Honduras: I. Isolation of a strain of Trypanosoma (Schizotrypanum) cruzi from a triatomine bug, Triatoma dimidiata (Hemiptera, Reduviidae)

ABSTRACT

An infection with flagellates in the gut of a wild triatomine bug, Triatoma dimidiata, caught in Mountain Pine Ridge, Cayo District, British Honduras, is described. The flagellates on subsequent inoculation into white rats and mice produced an infection with a trypanosome identical with Trypanosoma cruzi. Tissue stages (Leishman-Donovan bodies and developing forms) were seen in the heart muscle of all the infected animals. Clean laboratory-bred nymphs of T. dimidiata were infected by feeding on the parasitized animals, and the faeces from these nymphs proved infective to white rats and mice. The experimental evidence collected during these investigations shows that the infection in the wild reduvid bug, as well as those in all the subsequently infected animals, was due to T. (Schizotrypanum) cruzi