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Clin. Vaccine Immunol. doi:10.1128/CVI.00106-07
Copyright (c) 2007, American Society for Microbiology and/or the Listed Authors/Institutions. All Rights Reserved.

SEROLOGICAL EVALUATION OF SPECIFIC TREATMENT IN PATIENTS WITH CHRONIC CHAGAS DISEASE

Instituto de Patología Experimental, Facultad de Ciencias de la Salud, Universidad Nacional de Salta, calle Buenos Aires 177, 4400 Salta, Argentina

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: olgasanette{at}yahoo.com.ar.

	Abstract

Serological tests are the main laboratory procedure for diagnosis during the indeterminate and chronic stage of Chagas' disease. Serological negativization is the main criterion used to define the parasitological cure in treated patients. The aim of this work was to monitor the individual specificity of antibody levels during 3 years post- treatment in 18 adult patients. Conventional serological techniques (hemagglutination assays and ELISA) were modified using recombinant antigens to detect early markers of treatment effectiveness. For this purpose serum samples were taken before, during and after-treatment, at 6 month periods for at least 3 years.

When using hemagglutination assays, a decrease of antibody levels was observed in only one patient. When using ELISA with serum dilutions, antibody clearance became much more apparent: In 77.7 % (14/18) of the patients, antibody titers became negative with time. This was observed at the 1/320 serum dilutions, and occurred between the 6^th and the 30^th month post-treatment. The immune response and the interval for serological negativization were different for each patient. For some of the recombinant antigens, only 50% (9/18) of the patients reached the negativization. Recombinant antigen 13 might be a good marker of treatment effectiveness, since 66.6% (6/9) of the patients presented early negativization of specific antibodies to this antigen (p=0.002).