TRYPANOSOMA-CRUZI - PANINFECTIVITY OF CL STRAIN DURING MURINE ACUTE INFECTION

A systematic study of the distribution of intracellular parasites in t he organs and tissues of mice acutely infected (15 days) with the CL s train of Trypanosoma cruzi was performed. Almost all tissues and organ s were parasitized with different intensities, including several epith elial cell types. In addition to striated, cardiac, and smooth muscles a very high parasitism of fat cells, pancreas, and genital adnexa was observed. A smaller number of parasites was found in all other struct ures studied except in highly vascularized structures such as in the p enile corpora cavernosa, pulmonary and renal parenchyma, islets of Lan gerhans, hepatic sinusoids, and in atrial endothelium. This paper also shows, for the first time in the literature, the parasitism of milky spots, cornea epithelium, cornea stroma, retroorbital fibroblasts, sem inal vesicles, and coagulative, Cowper's, urethral, preputial, sebaceo us anal, and clitoris glands. The results indicated that CL strain is highly invasive, being able to infect cells derived from the three emb ryonic layers (ectoderm, mesoderm, and endoderm), suggesting that the paninfectivity may influence the outcome of immunological and patholog ical events. (C) 1996 Academic Press, Inc.