Evolution of knowledge on the etiological diagnosis of chagasic infection

Use of theTrypanosoma cruziRecombinant Complement Regulatory Protein To Evaluate Therapeutic Efficacy following Treatment of Chronic Chagasic Patients

“…In an examination of sera from children in the acute phase and in early chronic phase following treatment, other investigators reported similar declines in antibody recognition after several years of follow-up (1,33,44). Considering the high sensitivity and specificity of the CoML test in detecting lytic antibodies and the absence of significant difference between the positive percentage reduction tendencies of this test and the rCRP ELISA in the posttherapeutic patient evaluation, we conclude that the rCRP ELISA is an efficient and specific indicator of parasite clearance and suggest its use as a cure criterion.…”

Efficacy of benznidazol treatment for asymptomatic chagasic patients from state of Rio Grande do Sul evaluated during a three years follow-up

“…On the other hand, serology became negative after successful parasitological treatment of both acute and chronic infection, indicating cure from the infection (Luquetti 1999). A negative parasitological test alone does not represent treatment success; however, its positivity after chemotherapy represents therapeutic failure.…”

Diagnosis of Chagas disease: what has been achieved? What remains to be done with regard to diagnosis and follow up studies?

“…As described by Luquetti (1999), improvements in diagnosis can be seen to have occurred during a number of key periods: during the first period, from discovery until 1960, diagnosis was performed using XD for parasitological research and using complement fixation reaction (CFR) for serological diagnosis of the chronic phase. During a second period, from [1960][1961][1962][1963][1964][1965][1966][1967][1968][1969][1970][1971][1972][1973][1974][1975], major progress was made.…”