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Updated: Jun 2, 2026

Sexual Transmission of American Trypanosomes from Males and Females to Naive Mates
Published on: January 27, 2019
Incidence of Trypanosoma cruzi transmission through breastfeeding during acute experimental Chagas disease
Luciamare Perinetti Alves Martins1, Roberto Esteves Pires Castanho, Adriano Barbosa Nogueira
1Faculdade de Medicina de Marília, Rua Dona Maria Feres, 165 Bairro Fragata Marilia, SP, Brazil. luciapam@famema.br
Objective:
To verify the incidence of T. cruzi transmission through breastfeeding during acute experimental Chagas' disease.
Methods:
Fifteen female Swiss mice were mated and, after pregnancy confirmation, placed in individual cages. A few hours after birth, the females were inoculated with 0.1 mL of blood containing approximately 3 x 10(5) trypomastigote forms of Y strain of T. cruzi and continued breastfeeding for 25 days.
Results:
In 142 offspring examined no infection through breast-feeding was observed.
Conclusions:
The low number of trypomastigote forms ingested by the newborn mice combined with biological and biochemical characteristics of blood trypomastigotes may explain the lack of transmission in this experiment.
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