aager at MEDNET.MED.MIAMI.EDU wrote:
: With regards to leishmanial organisms, has anyone heard of any
: congenital transmission of the visceral form in a rodent model?
: We are aware of two publications with respect to human congenital
: transmission; Lowe&Cooke 1929, and Jour.of Communicable Diseases 1987
: June. THANK YOU!
: Luis Elizondo
This is really a fairly interesting question whose answer may lie in
the history of science (although admittedly I've not scoured the
leishmanial literature in a serious fashion for several years). By
that I mean scientists' uses of infected animals may have precluded
investigation of vertical transmission, at least in a serious way.
Certainly hamsters can exhibit very heavy infections with amastigotes
in the gall bladder and a variety of other typically unreported
places, and so transplacental infection seems likely. Cotton rats
might be a good host to try some vertical transmission studies with;
they seem to carry a very heavy infection without all of the pathology
one sees in hamsters. Years ago we had good luck breeding cotton
rats by putting male and female together in a cage with a coffee can
with cotton in it, and leaving the can and cotton in after removing
the male (usually after three or four days). That way the female had
a place to hide and could build a nest.
John Janovy, Jr.
Bio Sci Univ Nebr-Lincoln
jjanovy at unLinfo.unL.edu
