Parasitaemia in Rabbit Bucks Experimentally Infected with Trypanosoma Brucei Brucei

摘要

This study was designed to determine the levels of parasitaemia on 20 healthy domesticated rabbit bucks infected with Trypanosoma brucei brucei over a period of eight weeks. Ten out of the 20 bucks were infected with 1 ml of the parasite containing 1 X 106 trypanosomes and known as infected group A, while the remaining ten bucks were left uninfected as group B. The infected bucks were monitored for six weeks while the others served as control post infection. Parasitaemia was present at day six in the group A animals with mean values of 2.90±0.31, after which there were fluctuations in the levels of parasitaemia with the lowest level of parasitaemia at day 34 having mean values of 0.60±0.16 and peak parasitaemia reached at day 10 post infection having mean value of 3.00±0.33. The overall mean parasitaemia was 1.99 ± 0.25.