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Behavioural alterations are independent of sickness behaviour in chronic experimental Chagas disease
Vilar-Pereira, Glaucia; Ruivo, Leonardo Alexandre de Souza & Lannes-Vieira, Joseli
Abstract
The existence of the nervous form of Chagas disease is a matter of discussion since Carlos Chagas described
neurological disorders, learning and behavioural alterations in Trypanosoma cruzi-infected individuals. In most
patients, the clinical manifestations of the acute phase, including neurological abnormalities, resolve spontaneously
without apparent consequence in the chronic phase of infection. However, chronic Chagas disease patients have
behavioural changes such as psychomotor alterations, attention and memory deficits, and depression. In the present
study, we tested whether or not behavioural alterations are reproducible in experimental models. We show that
C57BL/6 mice chronically infected with the Colombian strain of T. cruzi (150 days post-infection) exhibit behavioural
changes as (i) depression in the tail suspension and forced swim tests, (ii) anxiety analysed by elevated plus maze
and open field test sand and (iii) motor coordination in the rotarod test. These alterations are neither associated with
neuromuscular disorders assessed by the grip strength test nor with sickness behaviour analysed by temperature
variation sand weight loss. Therefore, chronically T. cruzi-infected mice replicate behavioural alterations (depression
and anxiety) detected in Chagas disease patients opening an opportunity to study the interconnection and the
physiopathology of these two biological processes in an infectious scenario.
Keywords
Chagas disease; Trypanosoma cruzi; behavioural alterations; sickness behaviour; depression; anxiety
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