[Cholelithiasis in chronic Chageas' disease patients]

Area of Science:

• Parasitic Diseases
• Gastroenterology
• Cardiology

Background:

• Conflicting results exist regarding biliary lithiasis in chronic Chagas' disease.
• Chagas' disease affects multiple organ systems, including the digestive and cardiac systems.
• Previous research has primarily focused on the digestive form of Chagas' disease concerning gallstones.

Purpose of the Study:

• To determine the frequency of cholelithiasis (gallstones) in patients with chronic Chagas' disease.
• To investigate if the occurrence of gallstones differs across various clinical forms of Chagas' disease.
• To compare gallstone prevalence in Chagas' disease patients with a control group.

Main Methods:

• Ultrasonographic scans were used to assess cholelithiasis frequency.
• 128 patients with chronic Chagas' disease were studied across different clinical forms.
• A control group of 1139 individuals without Chagas' disease, examined postmortem, was used for comparison.

Main Results:

• Chagasic males showed a significantly higher frequency of cholelithiasis (14.1%) compared to controls (6%).
• This increased frequency was particularly notable in the cardiac (26.3%) and cardiac-digestive (20%) forms, but not the digestive form (9.4%).
• Chagasic females also exhibited significantly higher cholelithiasis rates (42% total) across cardiac (50%) and digestive (31.6%) forms compared to controls (14%).

Conclusions:

• Male and female chronic Chagas' disease patients have an increased prevalence of gallstones.
• The risk of gallstones in Chagas' disease is not limited to the digestive form.
• Further attention to gallstone formation is warranted across all clinical presentations of chronic Chagas' disease.