Accomplishing the genotype-specific serodiagnosis of single and dual Trypanosoma cruzi infections by flow cytometry Chagas-Flow ATE-IgG2a

摘要

Trypanosoma cruzi shows great genetic diversity, and was subdivided into six DTUs (Discrete Typing Units), named TcI-TcVI. This genetic and biological variability, coupled with natural reinfection of hosts, may play an important role in the clinical and epidemiological features of the disease. Furthermore, hosts infected with different T. cruzi genotypes demonstrated distinct therapeutic response. Thus, the development of new methods for genotype-specific diagnosis of T. cruzi infection is very important for clinical and epidemiological studies and for post-therapeutic monitoring of patients treated. Biochemical and molecular methods are used for the purpose, however, these techniques have methodological limitations. In addition, the standardized serological methods for genotype-specific diagnosis of Chagas disease present antigenic limitations and also do not evaluate the reactivity of serum samples from mixed infections. In order to overcome these challenges, our group developed the Chagas-Flow ATE-IgG2a technique with good performance for universal and genotype-specific diagnosis of single T. cruzi infection in the chronic phase. Based on our previous results, in the present investigation, we evaluated the applicability of Chagas-Flow ATE-IgG2a in the genotype-specific diagnosis at early and late stages for single and dual T. cruzi infections.