Evidence of Likely Autochthonous Chagas Disease in the Southwestern United States: A Case Series of Trypanosoma Cruzi Seropositive Blood Donors

Author(s)

Mary K. Lynn, University of South Carolina - ColumbiaFollow
Kyndall C. Dye-Braumuller
Norman L. Beatty
Patricia L. Dorn
Stephen A. Klotz
Susan L. Stramer
Rebecca L. Townsend
Hany Kamel
Jacquelyn M. Vannoy
Patrick Sadler
Susan P. Montgomery
Hilda N. Rivera
Melissa Nolan Ph.D., MPH, University of South CarolinaFollow

Document Type

Article

Abstract

Background Chagas disease is a parasitic infection that can insidiously cause non-ischemic cardiomyopathy. Given the largely silent nature of this progressive disease, asymptomatic blood donors pose potential blood transfusion risk. Blood donation screening has become an unintentional form of Chagas disease surveillance, with thousands of new cases identified since national surveillance was initiated in 2007.

Study Design and Methods We recruited T. cruzi-positive blood donors identified from California and Arizona blood centers for confirmatory blood screening and assessment of lifetime infection risk.

Results Among eight suspected cases, we identified four confirmed US autochthonous infections. The current manuscript details the transmission sources, healthcare-seeking behaviors post-blood donation resulting, and clinical course of disease among persons without any history of travel to endemic Latin American countries.

Discussion This manuscript presents four additional US-acquired Chagas disease cases and identifies an opportunity for blood centers to assist in confronting barriers surrounding Chagas disease in the US.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.1111/trf.17026

Publication Info

Published in Transfusion, Volume 62, Issue 9, 2022, pages 1808-1817.

Rights

© 2022 The Authors. Transfusion published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of AABB.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

APA Citation

Lynn, M. K., Dye‐Braumuller, K. C., Beatty, N. L., Dorn, P. L., Klotz, S. A., Stramer, S. L., Townsend, R. L., Kamel, H., Vannoy, J. M., Sadler, P., Montgomery, S. P., Rivera, H. N., & Nolan, M. S. (2022). Evidence of likely autochthonous Chagas disease in the southwestern United States: A case series of Trypanosoma cruzi seropositive blood donors. Transfusion, 62(9), 1808–1817. https://doi.org/10.1111/trf.17026