Conclusion
CD is a highly neglected tropical disease, and it has increasingly
become a worldwide problem. There are an alarming number of undiagnosed
and untreated patients, and an urgent need for researchers and providers
to change this fact. The choice for treatment remains between two drugs,
created a century ago. The strongest data to support benefit-risk
considerations come from trials in children (see Table 1 ).
Scientific and economic effort should be urgently aimed to supply early
diagnose and treatment in this population, in addition to more research
in this area. New biomarkers for CD are strongly needed for the
diagnosis and detection of treatment efficacy and efforts from academia
and pharmaceutical companies to accelerate the process of new drugs
development are necessary. Also, an extra effort to standardize a
predictive Chagas disease in vivo model should be done and
validated in order to improve its predictability and to ease its
comparison and reproducibility.
Early diagnosis and treatment of Chagas diseases, especially in
pediatric patients, are vital for an effective and safe use of the
available drugs (BZN and NF) medications.
Funding: The authors received no funding specifically
for this project. Dr Facundo Garcia-Bournissen is funded by the
University of Western Ontario, Dr Jaime Altcheh is funded by Hospital de
Niños Ricardo Gutierrez, Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Dr Fernanda
Lascano is the recipient of a “doctorate” scholarship by CONICET,
Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Conflicts of interest: Dr Facundo Garcia Bournissen
has consulted for Chemo for projects not related to benznidazole, and
has participated in nifurtimox clinical trials sponsored by Bayer.
Dr Jaime Altcheh has consulted for Bayer, and for Chemo. Dr Fernanda
Lascano has no potential conflicts of interest to disclose.