Although the vaccine against Chagas disease is already being applied in the field, the experimental phase continues and for the moment it will be applied only to dogs at Sudzal, Mérida police station, said the specialist of the Regional Research Center “Dr. . Hideyo Noguchi “of the Autonomous University of Yucatan (UADY), Etienne Waleclx.
Therefore, there is still no date to start with the application of the respective dose in humans, as the pilot project being developed with the dogs will last four years, and then proceed with the best option for Yucatecans.
In a press conference, he stressed that in Yucatan alone there are more than 60,000 people infected with this “disease of poverty” instead; not everyone knows this and, worst of all, many die unaware that they have been infected.
He reiterated that this “forgotten disease” is more common in rural areas than in urban areas, however; due to rapid population growth, the risk of contagion due to deforestation caused by the construction of new lots increases.
Even in rural areas, 30 percent of kissing insects are infected, while in urban areas it is 70 percent of these insects, because pathogenic animals are more tolerable to human-caused ailments.
The propagator of this “delayed disease” lives in rocks and dry trees, far from wetlands, thus invading their habitat they spread the disease.
He explained that in the UADY pilot study the respective dose is applied to 50 of Sudzal’s dogs.
He added that the standard vaccination scheme in these dogs, with one dose every 15 days, up to cover three applications, to see the efficacy of the therapeutic vaccine, and thus have an alternative to the currently used drugs, as well as a strategy.
For his part, the researcher Pedro Pablo Martínez Vega, said that it is a long project, with evaluations every month, semester and year.
For the development of vaccines, it is a long process, since it has several stages, then the execution of in vitro tests in the cells, the measurement of the efficacy against the pathogen, the preclinical stages when testing in experimental models in the laboratory, then in the open population, in this case it was with dogs, others are practiced with non-human primates, to measure their effectiveness.
Eventually, the serum immune response of human Yucatecan patients in people is verified, but it is not yet in the applicable stage, much less is there a date to vaccinate people.
In a press conference, the French specialist commented that Chagas disease is caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzy, which is transmitted mainly through the infected feces of blood-sucking insects, called triatomic insects.
In addition to this route, the organism can be transmitted via blood transfusion or organ transplantation from infected donors, ingestion of food or drink contaminated by the parasite, laboratory accidents or from an infected mother to the fetus.
He pointed out that possums are the reservoir of the parasite, but they do not transmit the disease and made it clear that it spreads when the animal is bitten by a healthy bedbug and transmits it to people.
“Popossums should not be eliminated, as this would greatly damage the environment as they are part of the food chain, and since they do not exist, the disease would spread more quickly to humans,” he stressed.
Dogs can become infected when they are bitten by such an insect, hence the importance of keeping the animal clean and, if you have a home, check that it does not have such an invertebrate.
Chagas disease is classified in the group of neglected tropical diseases.
There are at least 31 indigenous species of triatomines in Mexico and it is estimated that between three and four percent of the population is infected with the parasite, or about four million people.
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