A simple method of preparing clean intact granulomas and granuloma cells from livers of definitive hosts infected with either Schistosoma mansoni or Schistosoma japonicum

The drawback of existing techniques for obtaining intact granulomas and granuloma cells have been, (1) lack of clean intact granulomas without adhering liver tissues, (2) isolating inadequate numbers of clean intact granulomas, and (3) obtaining low numbers of viable granuloma cells from the granulomas. This work aims at developing a method which eliminates these problems. C57Bl/6 mice and baboons have been utilized as definitive hosts. Major emphasis has been on Schistosoma mansoni liver egg granuloma, though some work was carried out using S. japonicum. The work demonstrates that it is possible to obtain enough clean liver granulomas and large numbers of granuloma cells from animals with schistosome infection by using two stages of digestion with collagenase. However, one needs to adjust the concentration of collagenase and also the periods of incubation, depending on the parasite and the host species.