The Differentiation of Species of Trichomonads by Immunological Methods

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Abstract
The study herein presented is concerned with the questions of identity of, or differences between, Trichomonas hominis and Trichomonas vaginalis, and for comparative purposes Trichomonas foetus is included. The two former named organisms have been generally assumed to be of different species, the T. hominis being a form whose habitat is the intestine, whereas T. vaginalis is found in the human vagina and only occasionally in the prostate gland of man. T. foetus is the common pathogenic form found in cattle. The approach employed in this work is that of serological technic. Antigens derived from bacteria-free cultures of T. vaginalis and T. foetus have been studied particularly since these cultures have become available (1, 2). Byrne and Nelson of this laboratory (3) studied the nature of immunity to T. foetus infections in rabbits, but could not correlate resistance to infection with agglutinative titers in the blood of animals which were infected intravaginally or injected intravenously with living trichomonads.