Parasitological observations of Schistosoma bovis in normal and T-cell deprived mice

A laboratory life-cycle of Schistosoma bovis was established in order to study the host-parasite relationship in immunologically intact and T-cell deprived mice. Normal mice were found to have 'self-cured' their S. bovis infections almost completely by 10 weeks after cercarial administration, and there was no evidence of self-cure by day 79 in T-cell deprived animals. Thus, groups of deprived mice autopsied between 9 and 11 weeks after infection were invariably found to have greater worm burdens and a greater total number of eggs in the liver than comparably-infected normal mice. However, liver egg counts/worm pair were similar in the two types of host, and differences between normal and deprived mice with respect to total S. bovis egg counts in the intestine were also not consistently in the same direction in all experiments. Faecal egg counts were always less in deprived mice than in normal mice, even in an experiment in which the deprived mice had a significantly higher intestinal tissue egg count than the normal control group. The results are discussed in relation to the better known S. mansoni/mouse host-parasite relationship.