Justice where justice is due: A posthumous Nobel Prize to Carlos Chagas (1879–1934), the discoverer of American Trypanosomiasis (Chagas' disease)

Nobel Prizes: Contributions to Cardiology

“…Although Carlos Chagas researched and discovered the etiological agent, the vector, the mode of transmission and clinical forms of trypanosomiasis, a unique feat in the history of world’s science, he was a candidate for the Nobel a few times, but was unsuccessful. There are hypotheses that attempt to explain why a genuinely Brazilian contribution in the field of cardiology has not been contemplated with the Nobel prize 6 , 7 .…”

“…Carlos Chagas ( Figure 3 ) was the first researcher in the world's scientific history to describe the complete cycle of a disease, currently known as Chagas disease 40 . His research with Trypanosoma cruzi started between the years 1907 and 1909, when he was sent to the countryside of the state of Minas Gerais to help fight malaria among workers building the Brazilian Central Railway 7 . In 1909, he identified the parasite in the blood of a child with "fever, anemia, edema and generalized lymphadenopathy" and later described the life cycle of T. cruzi 7 .…”

Doença de Chagas: os 100 anos da descoberta e a atualidade do pensamento do seu descobridor

“…É muito provável que isto tenha relação com a forte oposição que Chagas encontrou à época na Academia Nacional de Medicina, fazendo com que a doença por ele descrita ficasse no esquecimento por cerca de 20 anos (22) (2) . Por outro lado, há quem conteste que esta oposição a Carlos Chagas, embora profundamente lamentável, tenha sido decisiva quanto à não premiação em 1921 porque outros fatores poderiam ter influenciado as decisões do Comitê Nobel (16) .…”

Ventricular Arrhythmias and Sudden Cardiac Death in Patients with Chagas Disease

“…The next year he emphasized the importance of the abnormalities in the cardiac rhythm found in some patients with chronic disease. Hence, he then already suggested the existence of heart involvement in patients with chronic Chagas disease [22][23][24][25]. He noticed the presence of premature ventricular contractions (PVC) and stressed the presence of AV block in cases of extreme bradycardia during physical examination as cause of abnormalities in the cardiac rhythm.…”