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Effect of Lysine Deficiency on Chagas' Disease in Laboratory Rats^1,2,

Parasitology Division of the Department of Tropical Medicine and Public Health, and the Nutrition and Metabolism Research Laboratory of the Department of Medicine, Tulane University School of Medicine, New Orleans, Louisiana

Laboratory rats fed a purified diet containing a low quality protein, gluten, were more susceptible to infection with Trypanosoma cruzi than rats fed a diet containing a high quality protein, casein. Furthermore, supplementation of the gluten diet with lysine markedly reduced the susceptibility of rats to near control values. Chagas' disease, caused by an infection with T. cruzi, manifests itself by high blood parasite counts, extensive cardiac damage, and an increased mortality in the rats fed the unsupplemented gluten diet. Although supplementation of the gluten diet with the most limiting amino acid, lysine, reduced the signs and symptoms of Chagas' disease in rats, the average parasitemia and degree of cardiac damage were not reduced to the values shown for the control animals.

² Supported by a grant (E-977) from the National Institutes of Health, USPHS.

Manuscript received 6 May 1963.