Ethiological treatment of acute and chronic Chagas' heart disease

The uncertaintties in the ethiological treatment of Chagas' Disease are consequence of the lack of entire knowledge of its pathogeny and the no existence of a healing criterium. There is a consensus that antiparasite drugs should be used in the acute phase of the infection, regardless of the in...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Abílio Augusto Fragata Filho, Marco Aurélio Dias da Silva, Elias Boainain
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Associação Paulista de Medicina
Series:São Paulo Medical Journal
Subjects:
Online Access:http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1516-31801995000200020&lng=en&tlng=en
Description
Summary:The uncertaintties in the ethiological treatment of Chagas' Disease are consequence of the lack of entire knowledge of its pathogeny and the no existence of a healing criterium. There is a consensus that antiparasite drugs should be used in the acute phase of the infection, regardless of the infection route, in new crisis, in patients under immunossuppression and in organs transplantation. There is still controversy regarding subacute, chronic or indetermined phase or cases with mild cardiac/digestive forms, not included in the situations listed above neither in a research protocol. The treatment includes oral benzonidazol 5 mg/kg/day, bid or tid for 60 days. In 71 patients monitored in this fashion, the authors have found 60% of negative xenodiagnostic at the end of treatment. It is still necessary, however, to continue to investigate and accomplishing more randomized trials to confirm the efficacy of such method, and also to try to obtain effective and less toxic agents. It is also fundamental to standardize a more reliable healing criterium.
ISSN:1806-9460