Cultivation of .

Objective: is a protozoan parasite that causes many deaths worldwide. It's cultivation in an in vitro culture setting contributes significantly to scientific studies. However, there are no laboratories in Turkey that cultivate . Hence, the purpose of this study was to cultivate .

Methods: Five strains were used in our study and were kept frozen in liquid nitrogen tanks. These parasite strains were then thawed in a 37 °C water bath and transferred to the Albumax-complete medium that was previously prepared. After that, the petri dishes were placed in the chamber. For 30 seconds, a special gas mixture containing 5% CO, 5% O and 90% N was added into the chamber which was placed in a 37 °C oven and left for incubation for 2 days. At the end of the incubation period, thin smear preparations were prepared from the medium, stained with Giemsa and examined using an immersion lens.

Results: Examination of the smears revealed that trophozoite and schizont forms of all isolates were present at a rate of 2% in culture medium.

Conclusion: As a result of our study, the culture of was successfully developed. With this, several projects such as biological and chemical characteristics, pathogenicity, phenotypic and molecular-level drug sensitivities and parasite vaccination studies can be carried out more easily in our country.