Neurotrophic Factor Facilitates Cardiac Repair in a Mouse Model of Chronic Chagas Disease.

Most patients acutely infected with undergo short-term structural and functional cardiac alterations that heal without sequelae. By contrast, in patients whose disease progresses to chronic infection, irreversible degenerative chronic Chagas cardiomyopathy (CCC) may develop. To account for the contrast between cardiac regeneration in high-parasitism acute infection and progressive cardiomyopathy in low-parasitism CCC, we hypothesized that expresses repair factors that directly facilitate cardiac regeneration.