Observations on early and late post-sporozoite tissue stages in primate malaria. III. Further attempts to find early forms and to correlate hypnozoites with growing exo-erythrocytic schizonts and parasitaemic relapses in Plasmodium cynomolgi bastianellii infections.

ABSTRACT

Rhesus monkeys were heavily infected with sporozoites of Plasmodium cynomolgi bastianellii in an attempt to demonstrate the site of invasion of sporozoites into tissue cells and their growth there. Further attempts were made to correlate the appearance and loss of hypnozoites with parasitaemic relapses. Hypnozoites were demonstrated and once again shown to decrease in numbers over 229 days during which time the infection showed parasitaemic relapses. Liver biopsies taken at two-day intervals for 12 days showed that hypnozoites decreased in numbers over-all and growing schizonts were demonstrated in the liver. At this time a parasite the size of a hypnozoite was seen with two nuclei and another was seen with an elongate, possibly dividing nucleus in one monkey. an attempt to find the location of the early intracellular exoerythrocytic forms in the liver at various times less than 40 hours after infection using smears and immunological staining with newly prepared anti-sera failed. Large numbers of sporozoites of P. knowlesi were also injected into a rhesus monkey the liver of which on the fifth day after infection showed no hypnozoites among 157 sections of growing schizonts and no parasites at all on the 42nd day after infection. In P. cynomolgi bastianellii infections parasites, mostly hypnozoites, were found in the liver up to 229 days after infection.