Reactivation of Chagas Disease: Implications for Global Health

Reactivation of Chagas Disease (CD) is a global public health issue. Reactivation of disease can affect the management of CD and its clinical outcome, adding pressure to global health systems because it exacerbates symptoms, leading to misdiagnosis and delays in the administration of correct treatments. Concurrent infections complicate the issue of reactivation, because there are various parasites and disease treatment regimens that are able to influence or suppress the immune system of the host, reactivating disease within infected individuals. The effect of delayed symptoms of chronic CD and the potential for disease reactivation are of great importance to nonendemic regions of the world, where knowledge about CD is lacking and the potential for vectorial transmission is not known.

TrendsReactivation of CD is a global health issue, and is of particular importance in areas nonendemic for CD, where health systems are unprepared for cases of reactivation due to the lack of experience of local clinicians and the lack of drugs.With global migration already changing the epidemiology of CD, the identification of native vectors within areas nonendemic for CD that may support vectorial transmission is of particular concern.Animal models have improved methods used for drug development and the identification of drug targets for efficacy studies. In a similar way, experimental models studying reactivation of disease may allow us to expand on our current knowledge of alterations to both disease progression and the clinical management of disease.