[Behavior of the Y and Peruvian strains of Trypanosoma cruzi in mice, after passage through various media].

The behavior of two strains of Trypanosoma cruzi (Y and Peruvian strains) in experimental mouse infection, after being passed through different conditions of maintainance and cultivation was studied. The conditions were: Warren's acellular culture medium, cryopreservation in liquid Nitrogen, passage through the insect vector and direct blood passage from mice to mice. The parameters considered for comparative study were as follows: parasitemia, mortality rate, maximum survival time, morphology of parasites in peripheral blood, tissue tropism and histopathological lesions. Each experimental group consisted of two sub-groups according to the inocula: 10.000 or 50.000 trypomastigotes. The basic characteristics of the strains remained unchanged. These were macrophagotropism, predominance of slender forms of the parasite in early infection and 100 per cent mortality rate in the acute phase of the infection. However, decrease in the virulence was observed when the culture forms were used or when the infection with low inoculum was used (10.00 forms). Therefore the main biological characteristics of the strains tended to remain the same, regardless of the conditions used for maintainance and cultivation.