Chagas: one bite now, causes heart failure 20 years later
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One night you are sleeping peacefully, when suddenly a small bug drops down from the rafters above and decides to feed on your face. After sucking your blood to its heart’s content, the bug proceeds to defecate in the same space it had just enjoyed a meal. You awake the next morning with a swollen bite and scratch away to relieve the itch. In a few days you develop flu like symptoms – headache, diarrhea, fever, the works. A few weeks later, you have conquered the sickness. Years pass and the incident seems nothing more than the distant haze of a memory. Then one day, 20 years into the future, your heart stops working and you die. An autopsy reveals a megacolon (enlarged colon) and a megaesophagus (enlarged esophagus).
This story is repeated 20,000 times every year throughout the Americas. Chagas: a parasitic infection passed through the fecal matter of reduvid bugs, is the disease behind the mystery. Health services estimate eight to 11 million people carry the disease in the western hemisphere. Though early treatment of the disease can prevent its delayed chronic symptoms, the majority of carriers do not know they have been infected.
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more: http://revpana.wordpress.com/2012/08/31/chagas-one-bite-now-causes-heart-failure-20-years-later/
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