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CHAGAS DISEASE: WHAT IS KNOWN AND WHAT IS NEEDED – A BACKGROUND ARTICLE
Trypanosoma cruzi
Triatomíneos
Patogênese
Formas cinéticas
Morbidade-Mortalidade
Trypanosoma cruzi
Triatomines
Pathogenesis
Cinical forms
morbidity-mortality
Coura, José Rodrigues | Date Issued:
2007
Author
Affilliation
Fundação Oswaldo Cruz. Instituto Oswaldo Cruz. Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil.
Abstract
Chagas disease began millions of years ago as an enzootic disease of wild animals and started to be transmitted to man accidentally in the form of an anthropozoonosis when man invaded wild ecotopes. Endemic
Chagas disease became established as a zoonosis over the last 200-300 years through forest clearance for
agriculture and livestock rearing and adaptation of triatomines to domestic environments and to man and
domestic animals as a food source. It is estimated that 15 to 16 million people are infected with Trypanosoma
cruzi in Latin America and 75 to 90 million people are exposed to infection. When T. cruzi is transmitted to man
through the feces of triatomines, at bite sites or in mucosa, through blood transfusion or orally through contaminated food, it invades the bloodstream and lymphatic system and becomes established in the muscle and
cardiac tissue, the digestive system and phagocytic cells. This causes inflammatory lesions and immune responses, particularly mediated by CD4+, CD8+, interleukin-2 (IL) and IL-4, with cell and neuron destruction
and fibrosis, and leads to blockage of the cardiac conduction system, arrhythmia, cardiac insufficiency,
aperistalsis, and dilatation of hollow viscera, particularly the esophagus and colon. T. cruzi may also be transmitted from mother to child across the placenta and through the birth canal, thus causing abortion, prematurity, and organic lesions in the fetus. In immunosuppressed individuals, T. cruzi infection may become reactivated such that it spreads as a severe disease causing diffuse myocarditis and lesions of the central nervous
system. Chagas disease is characterized by an acute phase with or without symptoms, and with entry point
signs (inoculation chagoma or Romaña’s sign), fever, adenomegaly, hepatosplenomegaly, and evident parasitemia, and an indeterminate chronic phase (asymptomatic, with normal results from electrocardiogram and xray of the heart, esophagus, and colon) or with a cardiac, digestive or cardiac-digestive form. There is great
regional variation in the morbidity due to Chagas disease, and severe cardiac or digestive forms may occur in
10 to 50% of the cases, or the indeterminate form in the other asymptomatic cases, but with positive serology.
Several acute cases have been reported from Amazon region most of them by T. cruzi I, Z3, and a hybrid ZI/Z3.
We conclude this article presenting the ten top Chagas disease needs for the near future.
Keywords in Portuguese
Doença de ChagasTrypanosoma cruzi
Triatomíneos
Patogênese
Formas cinéticas
Morbidade-Mortalidade
Keywords
Chagas DiseaseTrypanosoma cruzi
Triatomines
Pathogenesis
Cinical forms
morbidity-mortality
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