PubMed · 2109737
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A W Woodruff. 1990. Darwin's illness.. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2109737/
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The quantitative determination of Inter leukin-2 Receptor (sIL-2R) in the serum of patients with acute or chronic Chagas disease is compared with values found in normal individuals. The mean value of soluble IL-2R in patients with acute Chagas' disease was found to be 3,282 +/- 171 U/ml. The mean value of sIL-2R in serum samples from chronic chagasic patients was 511 +/- 207 U/ml, while in the control or "normal" group of persons the mean value for sIL-2R was 366 +/- 108 U/ml. In patients with early or acute infections with T. cruzi, the serum levels of sIL-2R was usually above 1000 U/ml. However, the correlation with anti-T. cruzi antibodies and levels of sIL-2R was not always directly proportional. Specific antibodies anti-T. cruzi in serum from chronic chagasic patients, shown at low or high levels, did not reveal a proportional correlation with serum levels of sIL-2R which tend to be significantly lower than in early or acute infections. It is considered that high values for sIL-2R are related with the parasite activity and its pathologic interaction with the host. It is possible that high levels of sIL-2R could serve as an indicator of early or acute Chagas' disease and be useful in assessment of disease conditions and response to therapy.
The reduction of domiciliary infestation by insect vectors, the key to controlling Chagas' disease, depends on identification of housing features associated with infestation. In this study, log-linear modeling was used to reanalyze data collected in 1964-1968 from 371 houses on characteristics potentially associated with infestation by the vector Triatoma dimidiata in a Costa Rican town with endemic Chagas' disease. A possible increased risk of infestation was observed for houses with a dirt floor (as compared with houses with another floor type) and for houses in poor sanitary condition (as compared with houses in good sanitary condition). A new risk factor for house infestation, the presence of roof tiles, was identified; the odds of infestation for houses with a tile roof were 2.4 times greater than the odds for houses with a galvanized metal roof. This significantly increased risk is probably due to the harboring of T. dimidiata in stacks of spare tiles next to house walls rather than to the tile roofs themselves.