A modified drug regimen clears active and dormant trypanosomes in mouse models of Chagas disease.

ABSTRACT: A major contributor to treatment failure in Chagas disease, caused by infection with the protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, is that current treatment regimens do not address the drug insensitivity of transiently dormant T. cruzi amastigotes. Here, we demonstrated that use of a currently available drug in a modified treatment regimen of higher individual doses, given less frequently over an extended treatment period, could consistently extinguish T. cruzi infection in three mouse models of Chagas disease. Once per week administration of benznidazole at a dose 2.5 to 5 times the standard daily dose rapidly eliminated actively replicating parasites and ultimately eradicated the residual, transiently dormant parasite population in mice. This outcome was initially confirmed in "difficult to

SUBMITTER: Bustamante JM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7926267 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature