Association of infectivity, parasitaemia and virulence in a serodeme of Trypanosoma congolense

Quantitative methods were adopted to study the course of Trypanosoma congolense infection in mice and goats. The ease of initiating infection with a single organism (clone) was found to show a smooth correlation with the virulence of 24 isolates. Virulence of T. congolense was found to be directly related to the degree of viability of the parasite but inversely proportional to the capacity of the host to limit parasitaemia. Isolates obtained from the goat in the early stage of the infection were found to be highly infective but moderately virulent; subsequent isolates were of low infectivity and low virulence. Organisms obtained at the terminal stage of the infection were highly virulent. Generally, the highly virulent clones produced rapidly high parasitaemia and mortality in the host. The low virulence clones were characterised by low parasitaemia but very pronounced remission of trypanosomaemia.