Extracellular vesicles as a tool for identification of new biomarkers in Chagas disease
[eng] American tripanosomiasis or Chagas Disease (CD), caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi (T. cruzi), remains one of most neglected tropical diseases. Endemic from 21 countries in Latin America, it is the most important infection in the region in terms of public health and economic impact. Upd...
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| Tipo de recurso: | tesis doctoral |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2022 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Universidad de Barcelona |
| Repositorio: | Dipòsit Digital de la UB |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:diposit.ub.edu:2445/209386 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://hdl.handle.net/2445/209386 http://hdl.handle.net/10803/690476 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Malalties parasitàries Malaltia de Chagas Epidemiologia Marcadors bioquímics Parasitic diseases Chagas' disease Epidemiology Biochemical markers |
| Sumario: | [eng] American tripanosomiasis or Chagas Disease (CD), caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi (T. cruzi), remains one of most neglected tropical diseases. Endemic from 21 countries in Latin America, it is the most important infection in the region in terms of public health and economic impact. Updated information from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) indicates that 12.000 people die from CD annually in the Americas. However, these figures may be highly conservative estimates, as other studies mention that as many as 200.000 people living with T. cruzi infection may die over the next five years from heart disease and related complications. Moreover, about 70 million people are exposed to the parasite, six to seven million now live with T. cruzi infection, and 30.000 new infections occur annually in the Americas. Furthermore, in the last decades CD has become a global health concern due to the migration flows from Latin America to United States, Europe, Canada and Japan. Many challenges remain regarding CD control and prevention in endemic and non-endemic countries. There is an urgent need of more practical and useful diagnostic methods, there are no preventive vaccines, and the two available treatments present several adverse drug reactions and limited efficacy during the chronic phase of the disease . Since there are no prognosis markers, drugs should be administered to all T. cruzi infected individuals that fulfill treatment criteria. Additionally, there are no tests-of-cure either, which limits patients´ follow-up and the search of safer and more efficacious drugs. Thus, the finding of reliable biomarkers of disease progression and/or treatment response would mean the greatest leap forward in the history of CD since its discovery in 1909. In this context, research on the role of extracellular vesicles (EVs) for biomarkers discovery has grown exponentially in the last decades. EVs are small double membrane vesicles of cellular origin, present in most biological fluids and secreted by all kind of cells. The different roles of EVs are still being explored, and include multiple biological functions, such as intercellular signaling and cell-to-cell communication. As the study of EVs is an active area of research, many biomedical utilities are still being explored, such as carriers for drug and gene therapy, antigen presentation, or therapeutic properties. Importantly, EVs present a huge potential as biomarkers in clinical diagnosis: they present highly specificity and sensitivity, excellent stability, and can be easily obtained in biofluids. This thesis explores the potential of EVs secreted during T. cruzi infection as potential biomarkers for therapeutic response and disease outcome in CD. |
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