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    Trypanosoma cruzi, the Causative Agent of Chagas' Disease: A Biological, Cultural, and Economic Review
    Trypanosoma cruzi, the Causative Agent of Chagas' Disease: A Biological, Cultural, and Economic Review
    Trypanosoma cruzi, the Causative Agent of Chagas' Disease: A Biological, Cultural, and Economic Review
    Ebook93 pages1 hour

    Trypanosoma cruzi, the Causative Agent of Chagas' Disease: A Biological, Cultural, and Economic Review

    By Nicole Searcey

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    About this ebook

    This e-book provides a detailed review including often overlooked aspects of the human parasite Trypanosoma cruzi. There is no vaccine and infection leads to the incurable Chagas’ disease, which is eventually fatal. Pathology is manifested in tissue and neuronal destruction, most commonly leading to megaesophagus, megacolon, and cardiomyopathy; characterized by a severely enlarged esophagus, colon, and heart, respectively. Each of these thirteen chapters features different aspects of the parasite and the disease, for example epidemiology, social stigma, lifecycle contributors, economic impact and more. This book was originally written as an assignment for an upper-class honors seminar, then expanded to meet requirements of a senior thesis, and now edited to make available for anyone wanting to learn more about Chagas' Disease and the unique yet traumatic parasite that causes it.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNicole Searcey
    Release dateDec 10, 2012
    ISBN9781301035359
    Trypanosoma cruzi, the Causative Agent of Chagas' Disease: A Biological, Cultural, and Economic Review
    Author

    Nicole Searcey

    Nicole Searcey is a graduate of the University of Nebraska - Lincoln (UNL) and the UNL Honors Program. She majored in Biological Sciences and received her Bachelors of Science with High Distinction. Nicole received a U.S. Student Research Fulbright Scholarship and will spend 2013 in Arica, Chile doing research in the fields of archaeology, parasitology and human biology. Nicole has diverse academic interests and her future goal is to pursue dentistry.

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      Book preview

      Trypanosoma cruzi, the Causative Agent of Chagas' Disease - Nicole Searcey

      Trypanosoma cruzi, the Causative Agent of Chagas’ Disease:

      A Biological, Cultural, and Economic Review

      Nicole Searcey

      ****

      Copyright 2012 by Nicole Searcey

      Smashwords Edition

      Thank you for downloading this free ebook. Although this is a free book, it remains the copyrighted property of this author, and may not be reproduced, copied, and distributed for commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy at Smashwords.com, where they can also discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support. If you are using this work as a reference in your own writing, the proper acknowledgement is:

      Searcey, N. 2012 Trypanosoma cruzi, the Causative Agent of Chagas’ Disease:

      A Biological, Cultural, and Economic Review. Smashwords Edition.

      ISBN: 9781301035359

      Table of Contents

      Introduction

      1. Overview of Trypanosoma cruzi: Classification, Characteristics, and Life Cycle

      2. Historical Conceptions and Advancements in Understanding T. cruzi

      3. Methodological Research: How Data are Gathered and Examples of Studies

      4. The Proliferation of T. cruzi through Populations: a Review of Contributing Factors

      5. Pathological Insults of T. cruzi Infection

      6. Demographic and Geographic Trends of Infection

      7. Doctors’ and Chagas’ Disease Patients: Historical and Current Treatments

      8. The Role of Public Health in Contesting Chagas’ Disease

      9. Demands of Chagas’ Disease Research: Financial, Logistical, Regulatory, and Political

      10. Current Research: Who is Doing It, Where, and Why

      11. The Cost of Chagas’ Disease: How It Affects Economical Systems

      12. How Culture Defines Chagas’ Disease: Social Aspects of Being Infected

      13. Big, Extravagant Ideas: Connecting People to Disconnect Chagas’ Disease

      Conclusion

      Bibliography

      ****

      Return to Table of Contents

      Introduction

      An unexpected bite from a hematophagous reduviid bug and subsequent inoculation with the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi results in the incurable Chagas’ Disease. This debilitating illness has been referred to in the literature as The new HIV/AIDS of the Americas. Similar to HIV/AIDS, Chagas’ Disease is characterized by prolonged and expensive treatment plans and prevalence in economically depressed communities (Hotez et al., 2012). The history of Trypanosoma cruzi is documented in thousands or more of scientific journals, books, online articles, and other mediums. There is a fascinating web of questions raised from one scientist to the next, and from one article to the next. Through searching UNL’s online database and checking out journals and books from the library, I found information on the antiquity and evolution of the T. cruzi taxon, the fluctuating beliefs of transmission and distribution, the reforming of experiments, and the development of drugs and control methods.

      Reading old and recent texts, those in old-English and ones translated, even a bit incorrectly, from Spanish to English made me realize how quickly information becomes outdated. The data collected and ideas suggested by one scientist gets added to by another scientist, and based on more data something slightly different is believed. Then the paper gets translated to different languages and the same message is represented by different letters. Can you image pre-historic humans using cave drawings to communicate an idea generated by the pathology of T. cruzi? Through time and from country to country, what we know about Chagas’ Disease is constantly transforming and being updated.

      A metaphor for the difficulty in understanding this parasite may be the number of times it has changed names. In 1909, the year T. cruzi was discovered, Carlos Chagas named it Schizotrypanum cruzi because he thought the trypanosome went through schizogony in the lungs of the host (Roberts and Janovy, 2009). I’m unsure why the following names were used to describe this species, yet nonetheless in 1916 Kofoid and McCulloch described the parasite with the name Trypanosoma triatomoe (maybe because it lives in Triatoma bugs) and in 1920 Yorke described it with the name Trypanosoma escomeli. It is now most commonly referred to as Trypanosoma cruzi.

      The objective of this review is to alleviate difficulty in learning about T. cruzi by summarizing numerous articles and connecting main ideas for a fluent and comprehensive understanding of Chagas’ Disease. I have written about many fascinating aspects including lifecycle information, a history of its understanding, methods of epidemiological research, environmental factors affecting the proliferation of T. cruzi, associated pathology and disease, demographic and geographic distributions, historical and current treatment methods, public health, associated economic costs, social stigma, and my own far-fetched ideas of how to combat this disease. The following pages are about becoming familiarized with Chagas’ Disease and learning about commonly overlooked important aspects of how Trypanosoma cruzi is affecting our lives on Earth.

      This book was initially written in the spring of 2012 to fulfill requirements of a University of Nebraska – Lincoln (UNL) undergraduate honors seminar: 395H Tropical Medicine, Infectious Disease, and Global Health. In the fall of 2012, it was further expanded and edited to meet requirements for an undergraduate senior thesis. This book was submitted to the UNL Honors Program and the UNL College of Arts and Sciences, for graduation from the University Honors Program and for graduation with High Distinction with a Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences, respectively. As a 2013 Fulbright Scholar, I look forward to learning even more about Trypanosoma cruzi from the study of mummies in Arica, Chile.

      ****

      Return to Table of Contents

      1. Overview of Trypanosoma cruzi: Classification, Characteristics, and Life Cycle

      Trypanosoma cruzi is a member of the phylum Excavata, class Kinetoplasta, order Trypanosomatida, and family Trypanosomatidae. Phylum Excavata is composed of various protozoa. Examples include diplomonads, oxymonads, and euglenozoans (Simpson et al., 2006). Species comprising the class Kinetoplasta are characterized by having a kinetoplast, or a body, within a mitochondrion, that contains linked circles of kDNA. The order Trypanosomatida is composed of species having a single flagellum. The flagellum may be long and protruding or short and non-protruding. Trypanosomatids also change body forms during different lifecycle stages. These forms include amastigote, choanomastigote, promastigote, opisthomastigote, epimastigote, and trypomastigote stages. The sequence of stages a trypanosomatid undergoes depends on the species. The Genus Trypanosoma includes species that cause major human diseases such as African sleeping sickness and Chagas’ Disease (Roberts and Janovy, 2009).

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