Soares Milena B P, Garcia Simone, Campos de Carvalho Antonio Carlos, Ribeiro dos Santos Ricardo
Centro de Pesquisas Gonçalo Moniz, FIOCRUZ. Rua Waldemar Falcão, 121 Candeal, Salvador, BA, 40296-710, Brazil.
Regen Med. 2007 May;2(3):257-64. doi: 10.2217/17460751.2.3.257.
Nearly a century after its discovery, Chagas' disease, caused by the protozoan Trypanosoma cruzi, remains a major health problem in Latin America. Although efforts in transmission control have contributed to a decrease in the number of new cases, approximately a third of chronic Chagasic individuals have or will develop the symptomatic forms of the disease, mainly cardiomyopathy. Chagas' disease is a progressively debilitating disease, which, at the final stages, there are no currently available treatments other than heart transplantation. In this scenario, cellular therapy is being tested as an alternative for millions of patients with heart dysfunction due to Chagas' disease. In this article, we review the studies of cellular therapy in animal models and in patients with Chagasic cardiomyopathy and the possible mechanisms by which cellular therapy may act in this disease.
在发现恰加斯病近一个世纪后，由原生动物克氏锥虫引起的恰加斯病仍是拉丁美洲的一个主要健康问题。尽管在传播控制方面所做的努力已使新病例数量有所减少，但约三分之一的慢性恰加斯病患者已经或将会出现该疾病的症状形式，主要是心肌病。恰加斯病是一种逐渐使人衰弱的疾病，在疾病的最后阶段，除了心脏移植外，目前没有其他可用的治疗方法。在这种情况下，细胞疗法正在作为数百万因恰加斯病而出现心脏功能障碍患者的一种替代治疗方法进行试验。在本文中，我们回顾了细胞疗法在动物模型和恰加斯病性心肌病患者中的研究，以及细胞疗法可能在该疾病中发挥作用的潜在机制。
