Isoenzyme characterization of some Trypanozoon stocks from a recent trypanosomiasis epidemic in Uganda

Abstract

The 1976-82 epidemic of human trypanosomiasis in south-east Uganda affected new foci to the north of the old endemic area bordering lake Victoria, and was associated with a different vector, Glossina fuscipes fuscipes; isoenzyme studies revealed that the epidemic involved different strains of pathogenic trypanosomes also. 58 Trypanozoon isolates from the epidemic area and from the adjoining endemic area of West Central Kenya were compared by thin-layer starch gel electrophoresis for 11 enzymes. Six different trypanosome zymodemes were circulating in man in the Ugandan epidemic, including the zymodeme found before 1976 in the old endemic area; all stocks examined from West Central Kenya belonged to this latter zymodeme. Trypanosomes identical to those found in man were found in cattle and a dog in Uganda, and in cattle in Kenya; these animals were presumably reservoir hosts of the human disease. Four isolates from triturated G. f. fuscipes collected in 1971 were identical but differed from all mammalian isolates examined.