Dr. Murai Éva - Gubányi András szerk.: Parasitologia Hungarica 31. (Budapest, 1998)
SHORT COMMUNICATION Rodent malaria: correlation between asynchronism and resistance to choloroquine Philippe GAUTRET 1 and Irène LANDAU 2 1 Laboratoire de Parasitobgie et Mycologie Médicale, Pavillon Camille Guérin, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire, La Milétrie BP 577, 86021 Poitiers, France 2 Laboratoire de Biologie Parasitaire (ERS CNRS 156) et Laboratoire de Protozoologie d'Histoire Naturelle 61 rue Buffon, 75231 Paris Cedex 05, France (Received 28 Febmary, 1998) While comparing the choloroquine sensitivity of several strains of rodent Plasmodium, Beauté-Lafitte et al. (1994b) came to the conclusion that the principal factor affecting the drug sensitivity was the number of free merozoites present in the organism. The species more sensitive to chloroquine were the ones with a smaller quantity of latent merozoites. The correlation between persistence of latent merozoites and asynchronism of the development of Plasmodium in the blood was previously evidenced by Cambie et al. (1990). This led Landau and Chabaud (1994) to assume that asynchronous development of rodent Plasmodium and resistance to choloroquine were closely related factors. In the present work, we studied the degree of synchronicity of four rodent Plasmodium species classified by Beaute-Lafítte et al. (1994b) according to the minimum single dose of chloroquine, which given at the time of mid-term trophozoite predominance, induced a significant lengthening of the prepatent period, in comparison with control untreated mice. Table 1 shows that P . chabaudi adami is the least resistant to chloroquine, followed by P. vinckei vinckei, P. berghei and P. yoelii killicki. Table 1. Minimum single dose of chloroquine, given at the time of mid-term trophozoite predominance, induces a significant lengthening of the prepatent period in mice infected with various species of Plasmodium, in comparison with control untreated mice. Plasmodium dose of chloroquine P . chabaudi adami (887 KA) 15 m sK& P. v. vinckei (67) 5 m S /K S P. berghei (NK65) 10 P. yoelii killicki (194 ZZK) 20 m g /K g
