Chagas disease in prehistory

Chagas disease in prehistory.

The classical hypothesis proposes that Chagas disease has been originated in the Andean region among prehistoric people when they started domesticating animals, changing to sedentary habits, and adopting agriculture. These changes in their way of life happened nearly 6,000 years ago. However, paleoparasitological data based on molecular tools showed that Trypanosoma cruzi infection and Chagas d...

Troponin in chagas disease.

Chagas disease is still a major tropical disease in Latin America, affecting 16 to 18 million people. About 6 million people are infected with the causative organism, Trypanosoma cruzi, in Brazil [1]. However, it often remains for decades in its indeterminate form, symptomless, with tissue injury in about 30% of the cases, which eventually will evolve to serious arrhythmia and sudden death [1]....

Chagas disease in Nicaragua

A brief prehistory of Huntington's disease.

Physicians and family members alike have long been curious about the historical origins of Huntington’s disease. Despite the fact that families with “hereditary chorea” were described in medical literature for the first time in the 1840s, most authors agree that the genetic abnormality and most likely the panoply of symptoms we know today as Huntington’s disease were present centuries earlier i...

[Chagas disease].

Chagas disease (human American trypanosomiasis) is a zoonose caused by the protozoan Trypanosoma cruzi. Vectors are Triatoma spp. insects. T. cruzi can also be transmitted by blood transfusion, organ transplantation, and transplacentally. Infection is generally acquired during infancy. The acute infection is rarely symptomatic and is followed by a chronic phase. Chronic infected people are asym...