372 



THE CILIATES 



cultivation, and that a single strain could 

 resemble B. cull if it was full-fed and 

 B. sids if it was starved. Lamy and Roux 

 (1950) found boths///s and col i forms in 

 clone cultures started from single organ- 

 isms and considered the siiis forms to be 

 conjugants and the culi forms trophozoites. 

 Auerbach (1953) concluded from his cyto- 

 logical and cultural studies that the 2 

 forms were not different species. 



BALANTIDIUM CO LI 

 (MALMSTEN, 1857) 

 STEIN, 1862 



Synonym : Balantidiwn suis. 



Disease : Balantidiosis, balantidial 

 dysentery. 



Hosts : Pig, man, chimpanzee, 

 orang-utan, rhesus monkey, cynomolgus 

 monkey, other macaques, rarely dog and 

 rat. 



Location : Cecum, colon. 



Geographic Distribution : Worldwide. 



Prevalence : B. coli is extremely 

 common in swine, having been reported 

 in 21 to 100% of them in various surveys 

 (Kennedy and Stewart, 1957), but the 

 lower figures may reflect the examination 

 technic rather than the true incidence 

 (de Carneri, 1958). It is much less com- 

 mon in man, its incidence in 12 surveys 

 comprising 24, 837 fecal specimens thru- 

 out the world being 0. 77% according to 

 Belding (1952). Shookhoff (1951) found it 

 in 0.6% of approximately 3000 Puerto 

 Rican patients. Swartzwelder (1950) des- 

 cribed 16 human cases in New Orleans; 

 these represented more than 1/4 of all the 

 available reports in the United States. 



B. coli occurs in primates other than 

 man, but is not common. Habermann and 

 Williams (1957) found it at postmortem 

 examination of 5 of 615 rhesus monkeys 

 obtained by the National Institutes of Health 

 from various importers; the animals had 

 died of various diseases. They did not find 

 it in 93 cynomolgus monkeys {Macaca phil- 

 ippinensis). Cockburn (1948) described an 



epidemic of enteritis among the larger 

 primates at the London Zoo which appeared 

 to be due to Balanlidiiim. Benson, Frem- 

 ming and Young (1955) reported it in cap- 

 tive chimpanzees. 



Balantidiu})i has been seen on rare 

 occasions in the dog. Dikmans (1948) re- 

 ported a case in a dog in North Carolina. 

 Bailey and Williams (1949) reported one 

 from Tennessee, and Hayes and Jordan 

 (1956) reported one from Georgia. 



Bogdanovich (1955) found B. coli in 6 

 out of 1 50 Norway rats in a Russian slaugh- 

 ter house. 



"Balantidiiim coli" has been reported 

 from the zebu (Cooper and Gulati, 1926) 

 and water buffalo (Priestley, 1944), but 

 Lubinsky (1957) considered it to be a late 

 exconjugant of Biixtonella sulcata, which 

 he had found commonly in the zebu. The 

 longitudinal furrow is inconspicuous in 

 this stage and is easily overlooked. 



Fig. 42. Balanlidium coli. A. Living 



trophozoite. B. Stained tropho- 

 zoite. C. Fresh cyst. D. Stained 

 cyst. X 450. (From Kudo, R. R. , 

 PROTOZOOLOGY 4th Ed. , 1954. 

 Courtesy of Charles C Thomas, 

 Publisher, Springfield, Illinois) 



Morphology : The trophozoites are 

 ovoid, with a subterminal cytostome at the 

 smaller end, and measure 30 to 150 by 25 



