Some Devon Rex and Sphynx cats have a variably progressive myopathy characterized by appendicular and axial muscle weakness, megaesophagus, pharyngeal weakness and fatigability with exercise. Muscle biopsies from affected cats demonstrated variable pathological changes ranging from dystrophic features to minimal abnormalities. Affected cats have exacerbation of weakness following anticholineste...

American trypanosomiasis (Chagas disease) is an important cause of human heart disease, megaesophagus and megacolon in Latin America, where the causative organism, Trypanosoma cruzi, is endemic. While this organism occasionally causes an acute illness, most people do not realize they are infected until several years or decades later, when some develop a chronic medical condition. Antiparasitic ...

HYPOTHESIS Two groups of patients with inadequate therapeutic success after surgical treatment for achalasia can be identified, patients with type 1 recurrence (early recurrence after technical failure of myotomy or a scarring process requiring remyotomy) and patients with type 2 recurrence (late recurrence with irreversible progression of the disease and development of megaesophagus requiring ...

Chagas' disease, caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, remains the leading cause of cardiopathy in Latin America with about 12 million people infected. Classic clinical manifestations derive from infection of muscle cells leading to progressive cardiomyopathy, while some patients develop megacolon or megaesophagus. A very aggressive clinical course including fulminant meningoencephalitis ha...

Chagas disease is a multisystemic disorder caused by the protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, which affects ~8 million people in Latin America, killing 7,000 people annually. Chagas disease is one of the main causes of death in the endemic area and the leading cause of infectious myocarditis in the world. T. cruzi infection induces two phases, acute and chronic, where the infection is initiall...

INTRODUCTION This study evaluated the clinical forms and manifestation severities of Chagas disease among serologically reactive individuals from Western Rio Grande do Norte (Northeastern Brazil). METHODS This cross-sectional study included 186 adults who were evaluated using electrocardiography, echocardiography, chest radiography, and contrast radiography of the esophagus and colon. A clini...

Chagas’ disease, caused by Trypanosoma cruzi infection, was discovered nearly 100 years ago (1909) by the Brazilian physician Carlos Chagas. Chronic Chagas’ disease is still ranked as the most serious parasitic disease in Latin America. Infected patients remain lifelong parasite carriers. With a latency of 10 to 30 years, nearly one third of parasite carriers develop life-threatening complicati...

Radiol Bras. 2016 Nov/Dez;49(6):V–VI This issue of Radiologia Brasileira features an interesting study on the radiological findings observed in patients with megaesophagus secondary to Chagas disease (CD), as identified on chest X-rays and esophagograms. The first point to be emphasized about that study is that, although it was conducted recently, it employed conventional radiology. Although ma...

The intracellular protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi causes Chagas’ disease in humans (Mengel and Rossi, 1992; Rassi et al., 2010). According to the latest studies, about 5–8 million people are infected by this parasite around the world, representing a significant global economic burden (Rassi et al., 2010; Lee et al., 2013; Maguire, 2015). The infection may be divided in acute, indeterminate...