Animal Red Blood Cells Research Articles

Auto-agglutination of red blood cells in trypanosomiasis

Introduction .—It is now a well recognised fact that the erythrocytes in fresh preparations of the blood of Sleeping Sickness cases and animals infected with trypanosomiasis frequently exhibit a more or less marked degree of agglutination. Attention was first drawn to this phenomenon n 1898 by Kanthack, Duraham and Blandford, who found that the red blood cells of animals infected with nagana, instead of forming rouleaux, tended to clump together into masses and to lose their outlines. More recently Christy (1904), Dutton and Todd (1905), Martin, Labœuf and Roubaud (1906-8), and others have described a similar condition in fresh preparations of the blood of patients suffering from Sleeping Sickness.