Highly effective serodiagnosis for Chagas' disease
Carregando...
Data
2010-10
Título da Revista
ISSN da Revista
Título de Volume
Editor
Resumo
Many proteins of Trypanosoma cruzi, the causative agent of Chagas’ disease, contain characteristic arrays of
highly repetitive immunogenic amino acid motifs. Diagnostic tests using these motifs in monomeric or dimeric
form have proven to provide markedly improved specificity compared to conventional tests based on crude
parasite extracts. However, in many cases the available tests still suffer from limited sensitivity. In this study
we produced stable synthetic genes with maximal codon variability for the four diagnostic antigens, B13, CRA,
TcD, and TcE, each containing between three and nine identical amino acid repeats. These genes were
combined by linker sequences encoding short proline-rich peptides, giving rise to a 24-kDa fusion protein
which was used as a novel diagnostic antigen in an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay setup. Validation of
the assay with a large number of well-characterized patient sera from Bolivia and Brazil revealed excellent
diagnostic performance. The high sensitivity of the new test may allow future studies to use blood collected by
finger prick and dried on filter paper, thus dramatically reducing the costs and effort for the detection of T. cruzi infection.
Descrição
Palavras-chave
Trypanosoma cruzi, Chagas’ disease, Serodiagnosis
Citação
HERNÁNDEZ, Pilar; HEIMANN, Michael; RIERA, Cristina; SOLANO, Marco; SANTALLA, José; LUQUETTI, Alejandro O.; BECK, Ewald. Highly effective serodiagnosis for Chagas' disease. Clinical and Vaccine Immunology, Washington, v. 17, n. 10, p. 1598-1604, Oct. 2010.