Chagas disease

Chagas disease is a Mammalian disease occurring only in the Americas.

It is caused by the protozoan Trypanosoma cruzi, one of the kinetoplastid
flagellates, transmitted to humans by triatomine insects known in the
different countries as assassin bug, vinchuca, kissing bug, chipo etc.
usually Triatoma protracta.

The human disease occurs in two stages: the acute stage shortly after the
infection and is usually mild fever and swelling around the bite area, 10-30
% of those bitten develop the chronic stage which appears after several
years. The disease affects the nervous system and heart. Chronic infections
result in various neurological disorders, including dementia, damage to the
heart muscle, and sometimes digestive damage (megacolon and megaesophagus).
Left untreated, Chagas' disease can be fatal.

The disease was named after the Brazilian physician Carlos Chagas who first
described it in 1910 but the disease was not seen as a major problem in
humans until the 1960s. The disease currently affects 16-18 m people,
killing around 20,000 annually and some 100 m are at risk of acquiring
Chagas disease.

The disease causing agent, Trypanosoma cruzi, is closely related to that of
African sleeping sickness, although the assisin bug vector is not closely
related to the tsetse fly, which carries African sleeping sickness.

In has been hypothesized that Charles Darwin might have sufferred from this
disease as a result of a bite of the so-called Great Black Bug of the Pampas (Triatoma).

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