Experimental Schistosomiasis mansoni in Mice Maintained on Nutritionally Deficient Diets. I. Effects of a Torula Yeast Ration Deficient in Factor 3, Vitamin E, and Cystine

Abstract

The Torula yeast ration, which in mice produces multiple dietary necrotic degeneration involving the heart, liver, muscle, and kidneys, had a profound influence on the course of the schistosome infection. The parasite did not attain normal adult size and with very few exceptions did not reach sexual maturity. The under-developed worms did not produce eggs, which in the normal infection are the major cause of pathology. When uninfected mice on the Torula yeast diet for 68 days were compared by electrophoretic studies on the sera with mice on a complete diet, the former showed 14% decrease in total protein, 23% decrease in albumin, 20% increase in beta globulin, 50% decrease in gamma globulin, unaltered alpha globulin, and 26% decrease in A/G ratio. S. mansoni infections in the deficient animals produced little or no further alteration in the serum protein levels. In mice fed a full diet, S. mansoni infections resulted in serum protein changes. The deficient diet increased coagulation time from a normal 2.7 min. to 5.5 min., and the prothrombin time from 12.1 to 26.4 sec; the fibrinogen level fell from 0.330 g% to 0.193 g%. Supplementation of the Torula yeast diet with either a Factor 3 concentrate or with a com[long dash]bination of vitamin E and cystine gave results that were comparable to those obtained from mice on a full diet.