Affordable diagnosis for Chagas disease [Elektronische Ressource] / vorgelegt von Pilar Hernández Pastor

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• Gesundheit

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• Publié par: justus-liebig-universitat_giessen
• Publié le: 01 janvier 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 15
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Inauguraldissertation
zur Erlangung der Doktorwürde
der Naturwissenschaftlichen Fachbereiche
Biologie, Chemie und Geowissenschaften
Im Fachbereich Biologie
der Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen




vorgelegt von


Pilar Hernández Pastor

M.Sc. Biology






Biochemisches Institut
der Medizinischen Fakultät
der Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen


Gießen, April 2008






Affordable diagnosis for Chagas disease




















Supervisors:

Prof. Dr. Michael Martin
Immunologie
am Fachbereich Biologie und Chemie
Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen


Prof. Dr. Ewald Beck
Institut für Biochemie
Fachbereich Humanmedizin
Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen


I
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I sincerely thank Prof. Ewald Beck for his constant motivation during the almost four
years of work on Master and PhD theses I have been in his laboratory. For his unceasing
support and never ending good mood. For his immense patience and careful explanations. For
the opportunity he gave me to know Bolivia and to understand the meaning of our work. For
keeping my ideals alive, and encouraging me to reach them. Danke, Ewald.
I would like to express my thanks to Prof. Michael Martin for his co-reference in this
work, and for his interest in the project of our group.
I want to thank all the people in the laboratory, very especially Barbara Preiss for her
countless help in all the experiments, incredible accuracy and for her interest and dedication.
Thanks to Michael Heimann, Ralf Füllkrug, Zandraa Jamba and the entire Niepmann group:
Carmen Fehr, Dr. Christiane Jünemann, Christiane Bung, Dagmar Goergen, Juliane Hirnet,
Jura Henke, Dr. Yutong Song and Dr. Michael Niepmann for the comfortable atmosphere,
useful advices, and funny moments. Also to the members of the Jomaa group, specially Dr.
Armin Reichenberg, Dajana Henschker, Dr. Jochen Wiesner, Dr. Martin Hinz, Nadine Englert
and René Röhrich.
I’m grateful to the people in Bolivia that made possible this work. Especially to Dr. Volga
Íñiguez in La Paz, for her constant help and for showing us her amazing country, and Marco
Solano in Cochabamba, for providing us with patient samples and allowing us to work in his
laboratory. I would like to thank Dr. Montserrat Portús from the Universitat de Barcelona as well,
for her advice and for providing us with samples of Chagas disease and leishmaniasis .
I can not forget all the friends I made these years in Germany, which are impossible to
list here. Thank you for being with me in happy and difficult moments, for showing me the best
of this country, and for the most valuable present, which is your friendship. Dankeschön für
eure Freundschaft!
Thank you to my friends in Barcelona, that in spite of the distance kept on encouraging
me, sharing with me the too short moments at home and transmitting me always positive energy
to continue.
My very special thanks to my mother, father and two sisters, which even far away in
Barcelona, are always close to me, offer me full support, and believe on what I do. Moltes
gràcies per recolzar-me, motivar-me a continuar i estar sempre al meu costat.
Finally, I would like to dedicate this work to all Chagas disease patients, which suffer in silence,
and whose voices will be louder by this work.







“No estalla como las bombas,
ni suena como los tiros.
Como el hambre, mata callando.
Como el hambre, mata a los callados;
a los que viven condenados al silencio
y mueren condenados al olvido.
Tragedia que no suena,
enfermos que no pagan,
enfermedad que no vende.”

Eduardo Galeano








“It does not explode like a bomb,
or echo like gunfire.
Like hunger, it kills in silence.
Like hunger, it kills the silent:
those who live condemned to silence,
those who die condemned to oblivion.
Tragedy that makes no sound,
patients that can not pay,
illness that will not sell.”





“Sie explodiert nicht wie eine Bombe,
und klingt nicht wie Kanonenfeuer.
Wie Hunger, tötet sie still.
Wie Hunger tötet sie die, die schweigen:
Jene, die zum Schweigen verdammt sind,
jene, die verdammt sind, in Vergessenheit zu sterben.
Eine Tragödie, die keinen Lärm macht,
Patienten, die nicht bezahlen können,
eine Krankheit, die sich nicht verkauft.“




I
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
SUMMARY
Chagas disease, caused by the flagellate Trypanosoma cruzi, is endemic in Latin
America where it imposes a high burden on disability and death combined with enormous
economic losses for up to 18 million people. Useful tests for the diagnosis of the disease are
available, but they are too expensive to be used in in large scale in most of the affected
countries. Furthermore, many diagnostic kits cannot clearly discriminate between Chagas
disease and visceral leishmaniasis, which can be tolerated for immunological screening of
samples in blood banks, but not for patients, since both diseases can occur in the same areas,
however, need to be treated with different drugs. In addition, it is essential to recognise infection
with T. cruzi in time, i.e. before the onset of severe clinical symptoms, since the available drugs
are effective in the early stages of the disease only. This demands developing more specific
and less expensive diagnostic tools.
By means a bioinformatic approach, several recombinant antigens were produced,
predominantly consisting of tandemly repeated amino acid sequences which occur in large
numbers in different proteins of the parasite. Since the corresponding repeated DNA structures
could not be maintained stably in E. coli, the whole range of possible base variations in codons
was used to create varying coding sequences for up to nine tandem repeats of identical amino
acid sequences. Some but not all of the expressed proteins were found to react strongly with
sera from infected patients. To simplify purification as well as production, the most suitable
antigens were fused. At the end a product composed of four different tandem repeat motives
was obtained revealing an unexpected high diagnostic sensitivity, which was several orders of
magnitude higher than with the antigens known so far. When used in ELISA, one milligram of
the recombinant antigen is sufficient for one million single tests.
Immunoassays can frequently not discriminate between acute infection and overcome
disease. Therefore, two different PCR assays were developed in addition to determine the
number of parasites circulating in blood after therapy with drugs. Targets of the one PCR assay
are the more than 200 fold amplified genes for 18S rRNA and, for the other assay, the
kinetoplast minicircle DNA which occurs in approximately 10.000 copies per parasite. Both of
these test can detect as few as 10 trypanosomes per millilitre of blood and can clearly
discriminate T. cruzi infections from infections with other Trypanosomatides.
In conclusion, several highly sensitive and specific diagnostic procedures have been
created, which are relatively simple to be performed and which can be produced for a low price.
It is the goal to instruct scientist in Latin America to produce and to use these tests in the long
term by their own means, independent of support from abroad. II
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ZUSAMMENFASSUNG

Die Chagas-Krankheit wird durch den Flagellaten Trypanosoma cruzi ausgelöst und ist
in Lateinamerika endemisch. Sie betrifft dort bis zu 18 Millionen Menschen und führt in vielen
Fällen zu schweren gesundheitlichen Schäden, nicht selten mit tödlichem Verlauf. Es gibt
empfindliche diagnostische Nachweisverfahren für die Krankheit, aber sie sind entschieden zu
teuer um in den betroffenen Ländern zum Einsatz zu kommen. Außerdem können viele dieser
Verfahren nicht izwischen Chagas-Krankheit und viszeraler Leis