Cardiac beta receptors' density or affinity modified by different Trypanosoma cruzi amount

Chagas' disease presents complex physiopathogenic mechanism, many of them poorly understood, that in our country generally produce cardiac lesions. The acute phase related with the presence of the parasite is usually asymptomatic. This report studies if the amount of T. cruzi that induced acute infection could modify the myocardiopathy evolution. Previous works have shown that Albino Swiss mice inoculated with 45 tripomastigotes (AcL) presented alterations in the cardiac pharmacological response to adrenergic agonist and antagonist studied at 30 days post-infection (p.i). Mice inoculated with 7 x 10(4) parasites/animal showed similar behaviour at 7 days p.i. We studied the involvement of the affinity and density of cardiac beta receptors in both acute groups by binding with 3H/DHA. The AcH group presented less cardiac beta receptors number (p < 0.001), but their affinity was conserved. The AcL model presented significantly less affinity (p < 0.01) but density was not different from non infected animals. beta receptors' affinity of both infected groups were similar, but AcH density was significantly diminished when compared with AcL. These studies demonstrates that the amount of T. cruzi received by the host determines and acelerates the evolution of the chagasic myocardiopathy.