Trypanosomas -- Stats
Tryapanosomas is a class of parasitic infection. Trypanosomes infect a variety of hosts and cause various diseases, including the fatal human diseases sleeping sickness, caused by Trypanosoma brucei, and Chagas disease, caused by Trypanosoma cruzi.
Sleeping sickness is found primarily in Africa. Chagas disease is found primarily in the Americas.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC):
What is this official statement based on? Mostly a lack of data collection:
No one knows exactly how many people in the United States have Chagas disease. Scientists think that in the United States there are at least 300,000 cases of Chagas disease in people, and there may be more than 1 million cases. Most states are not required to keep track of the number of people with Chagas disease. Doctors are starting to count the number of people with Chagas disease in Texas, Arizona, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Utah, and Los Angeles County.
US doctors tend to NOT test for parasitic infections of this sort. US doctors view parasitic infections as an issue for people in less developed countries, even though kissing bugs, which transmit the disease, are found in the warmer parts of the continental US and it is estimated that approximately half of them are infected with trypanasomes.
This is a disease associated with poverty. Odds are high that poor people in the US are at greater risk of infection with it. Poverty in the US tends to be worse for people of color, ergo we can infer that people of color are at greater risk of infection.
I believe my career-military ex-husband brought some variety of trypanosoma back from Saudi Arabia and infected me with it sexually. I have no medical tests confirming this. All I have is more than two decades of getting better when that is not supposed to be possible.
Perhaps a variety of trypanosome is a root cause of at least some cases of Gulf War Syndrome. If so, Chagas disease is not the only variant of the parasite we need to be concerned about in the US.
For Chagas disease: Antiparasitic treatment is most effective early in the course of infection: it eliminates T. cruzi from 50 to 80% of people in the acute phase, but only 20–60% of those in the chronic phase.
In other words, if you don't get treated early -- and most people have no idea they have it -- "symptom management is the name of the game." They don't really know how to reliably cure you.
Given the general lack of data collection, the attitude that parasitic infections are a problem in other countries but not the US and the fact that marginalized peoples (aka people of color) are likely at higher risk of infection, this is probably a quiet epidemic that has little hope of being recognized and treated. Even with treatment, doctors currently do not really know how to cure the chronic form of the condition reliably.
It's not a pretty picture, thus it's not something anyone is likely to want to aggressively promote as a cause either.
Sleeping sickness is found primarily in Africa. Chagas disease is found primarily in the Americas.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC):
- No drugs or vaccines for preventing infection are currently available.
- It is estimated that as many as 8 million people in Mexico, Central America, and South America have Chagas disease, most of whom do not know they are infected.
- It is found mainly, in rural areas of Latin America where poverty is widespread.
What is this official statement based on? Mostly a lack of data collection:
No one knows exactly how many people in the United States have Chagas disease. Scientists think that in the United States there are at least 300,000 cases of Chagas disease in people, and there may be more than 1 million cases. Most states are not required to keep track of the number of people with Chagas disease. Doctors are starting to count the number of people with Chagas disease in Texas, Arizona, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Utah, and Los Angeles County.
US doctors tend to NOT test for parasitic infections of this sort. US doctors view parasitic infections as an issue for people in less developed countries, even though kissing bugs, which transmit the disease, are found in the warmer parts of the continental US and it is estimated that approximately half of them are infected with trypanasomes.
This is a disease associated with poverty. Odds are high that poor people in the US are at greater risk of infection with it. Poverty in the US tends to be worse for people of color, ergo we can infer that people of color are at greater risk of infection.
I believe my career-military ex-husband brought some variety of trypanosoma back from Saudi Arabia and infected me with it sexually. I have no medical tests confirming this. All I have is more than two decades of getting better when that is not supposed to be possible.
Perhaps a variety of trypanosome is a root cause of at least some cases of Gulf War Syndrome. If so, Chagas disease is not the only variant of the parasite we need to be concerned about in the US.
For Chagas disease: Antiparasitic treatment is most effective early in the course of infection: it eliminates T. cruzi from 50 to 80% of people in the acute phase, but only 20–60% of those in the chronic phase.
In other words, if you don't get treated early -- and most people have no idea they have it -- "symptom management is the name of the game." They don't really know how to reliably cure you.
Given the general lack of data collection, the attitude that parasitic infections are a problem in other countries but not the US and the fact that marginalized peoples (aka people of color) are likely at higher risk of infection, this is probably a quiet epidemic that has little hope of being recognized and treated. Even with treatment, doctors currently do not really know how to cure the chronic form of the condition reliably.
It's not a pretty picture, thus it's not something anyone is likely to want to aggressively promote as a cause either.
