ANTIBODIES REACTIVE TO TRYPANOSOMA-CRUZI EPIMASTIGOTES OR AMASTIGOTESEXPRESS DIFFERENT IDIOTYPIC PATTERNS IF FROM PATIENTS WITH DIFFERENT CLINICAL FORMS OF CHAGAS-DISEASE

Antibodies (Abs) were purified from pooled sera of patients with eithe r indeterminate (IND or I) or cardiac (CARD or C) Chagas' disease, on either epimastigote (EPI or E) or amastigote-enriched (AMAST or A) ant igen (Ag) columns and their idiotypic (Id) expression examined. Anti-I d rabbit Abs were raised to the different preparations (E-IdI, E-IdC, A-IdI and A-IdC). Competitive ELISAs using anti-Ids were able to discr iminate between IdI and IdC, disregarding Ag reactivity. E-IdI and A-I dI present different inhibitory abilities, as do E-IdC and A-IdC, but IdC always competes with IdI for anti-IdI comparably. In contrast, a 4 -8-fold increase of IdI is required to compete in parallel with IdC fo r anti-IdC. Therefore, Ids from IND patients share only low levels of the Ids that are most characteristic of CARD patients. While some CARD Abs also express Ids in common with IND patients, these studies revea l that CARD Abs express some Ids that are characteristic to only CARD patients, and these Ids are present on Abs purified with either EPI or AMAST.