Relevance of Intracellular Replication in the Antibody-Parasite Competition during Chagas' Disease

G.J. SIBONA; C.A. CONDAT; S. COSSY ISASI

Dresden (Alemania)

Conferencia; European Conference on Mathematical and Theoretical Biology; 2005

Chagas´ disease, a widespread endemic disease in many Latin-American countries, is caused by an unicellular flagellate parasite: the Trypanosoma cruzi.We introduced a simple model for the parasite-antibody interaction that predicts all possible outcomes (healing, death, and chronic infection with both stationary and quasi-cyclic parasite populations) of the humoral reaction to Chagas infection. The outcomes of the model corresponds to the observed Clinical and in-laboratory manifestations of the disease. The model allows for the analysis of various interesting situations, such as the action of parasite-shed decoys, the possibility of delays in the immune reaction, and the effects of immune system "learning". Comparison is made with available data, showing very good agreement. An update of the model will be introduced to analize the cellular damage produced in the host through the parasite reproduction.