Prevalence of Chagas disease among schoolchildren in Buenos Aires City

pp 364-368

Abstract

Background
The prevalence of Chagas disease in schoolchil­dren of Buenos Aires City has not been stud­ied. 

Aims
To evaluate Chagas disease prevalence among schoolchildren in the Buenos Aires City. 

Method 

Data on place of birth and residency, previous blood transfusion or former diagnosis of Chagas disease were gathered among school­children and their mothers in a defined area of Buenos Aires City comprising 57 schools and 16313 pupils. According to that information, each child was classified as suspicious or nonsuspicious of having Chagas infection. Suspi­cious children were serologically studied with haemoagglutination and ELISA tests.

Results 

The 15357 questionnaires properly answered allowed to categorize 9638 children as non-sus­picious and 6719 as suspicious of bearing Chagas infection. Among these, 1931 were se­rologically studied and 7 were found positive. Only 2 of these children carne from endemic zones. The other 5 were born and spent their lives in Buenos Aires City. However, mothers of all these children carne from endemic areas.

Conclusions 

In a definite area -not representative of its entire territory- of Buenos Aires City, 0.3% of schoolchildren considered suspicious of carry­ing Chagas disease were confirmed to have the infection. As 5 of the 7 infected children were born and lived in a non endemic area (Buenos Aires City), it is clear that the infection was vertically acquired. This fact underlines the importance of congenital Chagas disease detec­tion at delivery, since this procedure makes it feasible to achieve the parasitological and serological cure with parasiticidal drugs in al­most all the cases so far identified.