Chagas Disease Megaesophagus Patients Carrying Variant P260A Display Nitro-Oxidative Stress and Mitochondrial Dysfunction in Response to IFN-γ Stimulus.

Chagas disease (CD), caused by the protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, affects 8 million people, and around 1/3 develop chronic cardiac (CCC) or digestive disease (megaesophagus/megacolon), while the majority remain asymptomatic, in the indeterminate form of Chagas disease (ASY). Most CCC cases in families with multiple Chagas disease patients carry damaging mutations in mitochondrial genes. We searched for exonic mutations associated to chagasic megaesophagus (CME) in genes essential to mitochondrial processes.

A refined genome phage display methodology delineates the human antibody response in patients with Chagas disease.

Large-scale mapping of antigens and epitopes is pivotal for developing immunotherapies but challenging, especially for eukaryotic pathogens, owing to their large genomes. Here, we developed an integrated platform for genome phage display (gPhage) to show that unbiased libraries of the eukaryotic parasite enable the identification of thousands of antigens recognized by serum samples from patients with Chagas disease. Because most of these antigens are hypothetical proteins, gPhage provides evidence of their expression during infection.

ELISA Saliva for Antibody Detection: An Alternative for Serological Surveys in Endemic Regions.

Chagas is a neglected disease endemic in Latin America. Vector transmission control had been aggressively performed. Recent entomological surveillance in Brazil has revealed natural infection rates ranging from 0.

An alternative storage method for characterization of the intestinal microbiota through next generation sequencing.

Gut microbiota has been the subject of various molecular studies mainly due to its importance and wide-ranging relationships with human hosts. However, the storage of fecal samples prior to DNA extraction is critical when characterizing the composition of intestinal microbiota. Therefore, we aimed to understand the effects of different fecal storage methods to characterize intestinal microbiota using Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) as well as to establish an alternative conservation method of bacterial genetic material in these samples using guanidine.