Control of trypanodestructive antibody responses and parasitemia in mice infected with Trypanosoma (Duttonella) vivax.

After infection with a cloned population of Trypanosoma vivax, C57BL/6 mice controlled parasitemia during the exponential growth phase and survived, with intermittent parasitemia, for several weeks. In contrast, most mice of the C3H/He strain did not control the first wave of parasitemia and died within 9 to 13 days after infection. Control of parasitemia in C57BL/6 mice was mediated by the production of a variant surface glycoprotein-specific trypanodestructive antibody response which was accompanied by production of antibodies against antigens shared between procyclic and bloodstream T. vivax as well as antibodies against trinitrophenyl (TNP) and sheep erythrocytes. The infected C3H/He mice did not produce trypanodestructive antibodies or antibodies against procyclic antigens or TNP but did produce antibodies against sheep erythrocytes. Although infected C57BL/6 mice produced levels of serum immunoglobulin M four times higher than infected C3H/He mice, their parasite-induced B-cell DNA synthetic responses were similar, and both sets of mice developed similar numbers of spleen cells with cytoplasmic immunoglobulin M, a proportion of which could react with TNP. In vitro biosynthetic labeling studies accompanied by immunoglobulin precipitation and sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis demonstrated that the immunoglobulin-containing cells of infected C3H/He mice synthesized and secreted less immunoglobulin than similar cells from infected C57BL/6 mice. We concluded that some parasite-induced antibody-forming cells in C3H/He mice, perhaps including parasite-specific and certainly including TNP-specific cells, had an impaired capacity to make and release immunoglobulin. Within 24 h after Berenil-mediated elimination of T. vivax from infected C3H/He mice, a population of cyclophosphamide-sensitive spleen cells produced large amounts of parasite-specific and TNP-specific antibody. We concluded that the defect in terminal B-cell function leading to suppressed parasite-specific and TNP-specific antibody responses was induced either by living trypanosomes or short-lived factors from degenerating trypanosomes or by short-lived parasite-induced host responses.