Establishment and testing of a Loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) test for detecting Trypanosoma cruzi in human blood samples.

Numerous techniques are available for diagnosing Chronic Chagas¿ disease, but none is completely satisfactory when used alone. Serological tests are highly sensitive methods, but they are not specific, because of the occurrence of false positive reactions, typically with sera from patients infected with other parasites such as Leishmania or Trypanosoma rangeli. Besides, these techniques do not indicate an active infection and they are not reliable in immune-suppressed patients. Other approaches such as xenodiagnosis, and blood culture are less sensitive, time consuming and required previous propagation of the parasite. To overcome the parasite detection¿s problems, herein a LAMP test is proposed.