The Unfortunate Abundance of Trypanosoma cruzi in Naturally Infected Dogs and Monkeys Provides Unique Opportunities to Advance Solutions for Chagas Disease

Abstract

Trypanosoma cruzi, the protozoan parasite and cause of Chagas disease, iswidely distributed in many vertebrate and triatomine species throughout North,Central, and South America. Variations in housing quality largely determineshuman infection risk in the Americas. However, the southern U.S. containswidespread, infected triatomine vectors and captive species and domesticatedanimals with active T. cruzi infection or at high risk of becoming infected anddeveloping Chagas disease. There is a critical need for better detection andintervention strategies, principally focused on human infection throughout theAmericas, but mainly in the U.S., for high-value dogs employed in governmentand other work. In addition to this economic impact, the concentration oflargely unavoidable T. cruzi infections in U.S. dogs provides an incomparableopportunity to answer questions related to T. cruzi infection and Chagasdisease that are impossible or unethical to address in humans. As the course ofT. cruzi infection and Chagas disease, the immune response to infection, andthe response to therapeutics are highly similar across the range of mammalianhost species, information obtained from studies in other species can directlyinform researchers on how to best detect, manage, and treat T. cruzi infectionand Chagas disease in humans.