Heart autonomic innervation during the acute phase of the experimental American trypanosomiasis in the dog.

Machado, Conceição Ribeiro da Silva; Caliari, Marcelo Vidigal; Lana, Marta de; Tafuri, Washington Luiz

Heart autonomic innervation during the acute phase of the experimental American trypanosomiasis in the dog.

Date

1998

Authors

Machado, Conceição Ribeiro da Silva

Caliari, Marcelo Vidigal

Lana, Marta de

Tafuri, Washington Luiz

Abstract

Heart autonomic innervation was studied in dogs during the acute phase of the experimental infection with the Berenice-78 strain of Trypanosoma cruzi. A glyoxylic acid–induced fluorescence method for catecholamines and a thiocholine method for demonstrating acetylcholinesterase activity showed the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nerve fibers, respectively. At day 34 of infection, moderate-to-intense rarefaction of both cholinergic and noradrenergic nerve fibers occurred in the atria of all animals coincident with moderate to intense myocarditis. In the ventricles, sympathetic denervation was clearly present only when the inflammatory processes were moderate to intense. Preliminary results on the chronic phase indicate that normal autonomic innervation coexists with an incipient chronic fibrosing myocarditis.

Citation

MACHADO, C. R. S. et al. Heart autonomic innervation during the acute phase of the experimental American trypanosomiasis in the dog. The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, v. 59, n.3, p. 492-496, 1998. Disponível em: <http://www.ajtmh.org/content/59/3/492.long>. Acesso em: 20 jan. 2017.