Towards the establishment of a consensus real-time qPCR to monitor Trypanosoma cruzi parasitemia in patients with chronic Chagas disease cardiomyopathy: A substudy from the BENEFIT trial

► We established a SYBR Green real-time qPCR assay to quantify T. cruzi load in blood. ► Chronic Chagas cardiomyopathy patients from the BENEFIT trial were evaluated. ► The median parasitic load found in Brazilian patients was 0.1 parasite equivalents/mL. ► Chronic Chagas disease patients from Colombia and Argentina yielded parasitemia values roughly 20 times higher than patients from Brazil. ► qPCR is useful to detect and quantify low parasite burden in chronic Chagas disease.