In July 1989, blood samples were collected from parasitaemic cattle in the Ghibe valley, Ethiopia, frozen in liquid nitrogen and transported to Nairobi, Kenya. Twelve of the stabilates were inoculated into individual Boran (Bos indicus) calves and characterised for their sensitivity, in turn, to diminazene aceturate (Berenil(R)), isometamidium chloride (Samorin(R)) and homidium chloride (Novidium(R)). All 12 stabilates produced infections which were shown to be Trypanosoma congolense and resistant to treatment with diminazene aceturate at a dose of 7.0 mg kg-1 body weight (b.w.). Eleven of the infections were also resistant to isometamidium chloride at a dose of 0.5 mg kg-1 b.w. and homidium chloride at a dose of 1.0 mg kg-1 b.w. The drug-sensitivity phenotypes of three of the same isolates were also determined in goats which were each treated with only one of the three trypanocides: all expressed the same phenotypes as the populations expressed in the aforementioned Boran calves. Five clones were derived from one of the isolates which expressed a high level of resistance to all three trypanocides; each clone expressed high levels of resistance to all three trypanocides when characterised in mice. Thus, the multi-resistance phenotype of the parental isolate was associated with expression of multi-resistance by individual trypanosomes. Finally, molecular karyotypes and electrophoretic variants of six enzymes were determined for seven and eight of the isolates, respectively. Six different karyotypes were observed and all eight of the latter isolates belonged to different zymodemes, indicating that the multi-resistance phenotype at Ghibe was associated with many genetically distinct populations.
