Trypanosoma brucei: a rapid “matching” method for estimating the host's parasitemia

WJ Herbert, WHR Lumsden - Experimental parasitology, 1976 - Elsevier
A new technique for estimating the absolute level of parasitemias in trypanosome infections
is described. At higher levels of infection this is achieved by matching microscopic fields of a
wet blood film against charts and, where fewer organisms are present, by counting the
number of trypanosomes in 5, 10, or 20 such microscope fields. Good estimates of the
number of organisms per milliliter of blood can be made rapidly over the whole range of
microscopically patent parasitemia, ie, above antilog 5.4 (250,000) organisms/ml.