Developments on treatment of Chagas disease – from discovery to current times

T.O. Custodio Leite

Universidade Federal Fluminense, Instituto de Química, Departamento de Química Orgânica, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Química, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. talitacustodio@id.uff.br

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• Pharmacology

OBJECTIVE: This work aims to collect publications of available drugs for reposition and new substance development against the Chagas disease, since they represent the beginning of a path for new discoveries of viable alternatives to improve the prognosis of millions of patients around the world.

PATIENTS AND METHODS: An extended research on English and Portuguese-language literature in the Scientific Electronic Library Online – Scielo, SciFinder and PubMed – database was made. The bibliography was screened using the keywords “Chagas Disease” and “Treatment”.

RESULTS: Despite the low resources available for research and development of drugs against Chagas disease, the knowledge produced in this area is large but not directly proportional to the therapeutic advances. Two categories were analyzed, such as drug repositioning, and new substances were researched.

CONCLUSIONS: Even if great findings were reported, more efforts are necessary to find new therapies against Trypanosoma cruzi (T. cruzi).

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