Host range, survival in dead hosts, cryopreservation, periodicity and morphology of Plasmodium durae Herman in experimental infections

Abstract

In experimental infections, fowl , duck, guineafowl and canary were refractory to Plasmodium durae, which in Japanese quail produced low and transient infections, but a high and long-lasting parasitaemia in a Lady Amherst pheasant. Heart, blood and brain of dead hosts injected into turkeys, allowed the recovery and further passaging of the live parasite. This technique could be useful for the recovery of malaria parasites from suspect postmortem material. Intravenous infection produced parasitaemias in chicken and turkey embryos, while attempts at allantoic-sac infections of chicken embryos were unsuccessful. A certain degree of periodicity of schizogony was demonstrated. The South African isolates of P. durae had smaller schizonts than those described from East and West Africa, with 2-14 merozoites (mostly four) . Some strains did not produce mature gametocytes in the experimental hosts. Exoerythrocytic schizonts of P. durae are depicted in this paper for the first time.