New testing discloses a deadly danger is in Bexar [Chagas in Texas]

San Antonio Express-News ^ | 02/15/2009 | Don Finley

[SwinneySwitch]

The Corpus Christi Community Blood Center checks for Chagas.

Consider donating.

[grey_whiskers]

I live in Minneapolis, and Chagas' disease is included in the list of pre-screening questions when donating blood.

Cheers!

[SwinneySwitch]

Ping!

If you want on, or off this S. Texas/Mexico ping list, please FReepMail me.

[donna]

But a recently approved test to screen blood donors has identified hundreds of cases across the United States — including eight in Bexar County.

Thank you President Bush and all illegal aliens everywhere.

[AuntB]

“E.J. Hanford, professor of environmental science at Collin County Community College in Frisco who has co-authored papers on Chagas, estimates that perhaps 200,000 immigrants in the United States could have chronic Chagas disease — most of them likely unaware — based on known infection rates and patterns throughout the hemisphere.”

Lovely, just lovely...

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Is the “kissing bug” the same as the “assassin bug”?

[EggsAckley]

I’ve said for years that “war” will not be the next downfall of the earth........it will be disease, epidemics, virii, etc. We’re already deeper in that direction than we even realize.

Creepy.

[LibFreeOrDie]

Romaña's sign

[DogBarkTree]

Yes

[Huntress]

Hmmm.

[Cuttnhorse]

It is a real nasty disease...named after the Brazilian doctor who identified it. I worked in South America for 8-years and we had Chagas warning signs at our remote camp sites. Scary one.

[MeneMeneTekelUpharsin]

Only two drugs are available to treat Chagas, and neither is approved in the United States. They are available only through the CDC on a compassionate basis. Both are fairly toxic, and there is controversy about how effective they are in the later stages of disease.

The drugs! What are the drugs! Some can get them in Latin America if they only knew WHICH drugs. Thanks in advance.

[MeneMeneTekelUpharsin]

Is one of them chloranphenicol?

[Yorlik803]

Prevention would be the best way of curing it, but too bad we cant spray DDT because of the bunny huggers love of animals over people.

[MeneMeneTekelUpharsin]

Immigrants just bringing in disease Americans don’t want to bring (or, actually, just don’t want).

[WildcatClan]

I think they are referring to Benznidazole and nifurtimox.

[Ole Okie]

Gee whiz! I used to play outside in the grass and would get those chiggas all over! Itched like the devil, but kerosene would usually quiet them down.

Oh. Chagas? Don’t know nothin’ about no chagas. Chiggas is what we had.

[vetvetdoug]

I was at the MW Dog Center at Lackland AFB in 1980 for a short period of time. Dr. Stamp had diagnosed a dog with Chaga’s then...I was a NG Sgt and in Veterinary College. I went back to school and did some research and concluded then that the disease was going to someday be endemic in our canine population in the US. I had been closely involved with the VEE outbreak and the USAF Veterinarian's involvement in the stoppage of that viral spread disease in 1971. The USAF Veterinary Service, now defunct thanks to politics, was on top of several zoonotic diseases that pose a problem to the US.

[pandoraou812]

Another nasty bug disease.

[HiJinx]

Ping!