Morphology and morphometry of three Plasmodium juxtanucleare (Apicomplexa: Plasmodiidae) isolates

In this work, three isolates of Plasmodium juxtanucleare have been analyzed based on morphological, morphometric and parasitic parameters. Each isolate was sampled from naturally infected adult chicken (Gallus gallus) from rural areas of three Brazilian municipalities: Seropédica (22 degrees 48' S; 43 degrees 41' W), in the state of Rio de Janeiro; Cruzeiro (22 degrees 33' S; 44 degrees 57' W), in the state of São Paulo; and Santa Bárbara do Tugúrio (21 degrees 15' S; 43 degrees 27' W), in the state of Minas Gerais. The blood samples taken from each infected chicken were inoculated in three groups of ten young chicken (21 days old). Blood smears of the experimentally infected chicken were sampled every two days until the 69th day in order to evaluate the parasitemia. For the morphological-descriptive and morphometric analyses, we measured 30 individuals from each of the intraerythocytic states, measures of the major (MD) and minor diameters (md), the estimation of morphometric index (Mi=md/MD) and size (T=pab, a=md/2; b=MD/2). The results indicated low and homogeneous parasitemia rates in the three strains, which showed differences among shape and size of the parasitic stadia displayed.