No abstract

Patients who were older than 65 years of age, retired, female, living in the urban area of Maringá, and infected by vector transmission in childhood in Paraná presented cardiac and digestive signs and did not receive etiological treatment when first diagnosed.

Summary Introduction: Parkinson disease is one of the pathologies mostly affecting deglutition. Objective: To analyze the efficiency of both deglutition and cough reflex in cases of laryngeal penetration or tracheal aspiration with food, in different severity stages of Parkinson disease. Study's way: contemporaneous cohort with transverse incision. Method: The sample had 38 patients in the study group and 38 individuals in the control group submitted to a neurologic evaluation and an otorhinolaryngological evaluation by transnasal fiberoptic laryngoscopy. Results: The cough reflex was manifested in 100% of patients without food offering. Alimentary stasis in piriform recesses and epiglottic vallecula in solid, pasty and liquid consistency was significant (p= 0.0000). The laryngeal penetration in liquid consistency was significant (p= 0.0036). Tracheal aspiration occurred in 06 patients of the study group in liquid consistency and it was absent in control group. Conclusion: The efficiency of deglutition in the study group prevailed in the solid consistency, followed by pasty and liquid consistencies. In the control group, deglutition was effective in all individuals. Cough reflex was efficient in most patients of the study group and prevalently inefficient in the subgroup 2.

Background: Researches on Chagas disease still use several animals and rats, due to size and susceptibility were preferred by many authors. Aim: To develop an experimental model of megacolon in rats inoculated with the strain Y of Trypanosoma cruzi. Methods: Thirty male Wistar rats were distributed in three groups inoculated with different inoculants: Group A: 600000, Group B: 1000000 and Group C: 1500000 blood trypomastigotes of T. cruzi. Animals were sedated intramuscularly at zero inoculation time (T0) and 60 days after inoculation (T60), to perform the barium enema in order to evaluate the dilatation of the different segments of colon in a comparative study of the measurements obtained, using a digital caliper. Evidence of infection was performed by blood smear collected from the animal’s tail 18 days after inoculation with observation of blood forms. Results: Comparing the intestinal diameter of the inoculated animals with 60,0000 trypomastigotes in the T0 of infection with T60 days after the inoculation, significant dilatation was observed between the proximal, medial and distal segments (p<0.01), indicating the establishment of the megacolon model. In addition, comparing intestinal diameter between the different segments, with in the T0 of infection and the T60 after inoculation, significant alterations were observed (p<0.05). Conclusion: The proposed model was possible for in vivo studies of alterations due to infection by T. cruzi and functional alterations of the colon. In addition, the changes manifested in the colon are not directly proportional to the size of the inoculum, but to the time of infection that the animals were submitted, since the animals inoculated with 60,0000 blood forms were the ones which presented the most significant alterations.

This is a cross-sectional and experimental study. The purpose of the study was to measure enteric neurons in rats with chagasic megacolon. Twenty-three male rats inoculated with 1,500,000 trypomastigotes of the Y strain of Trypanosoma cruzi were used. The animals were sedated intramuscularly at zero inoculation time (T 0 ) and at sixty days after inoculation (T 60 ), to perform a barium enema test to evaluate the dilatation of the different segments of the colon. Evidence of infection was performed with a blood smear collected from the animals' tails 18 days after inoculation with observation of blood forms. Membrane preparations underwent dual-label immunofluorescence of global and nitrergic neurons with HuC / HuD antibody and nNOS antibody, respectively. Subsequently, quantitative and morphometric analysis of cecal and proximal colon segments were performed. In the quantitative analysis of the proximal colon segment there was a significant decrease in the numbers of total neurons (Hucolo p=0.001), as well as in the number of nitrergic neurons (NOScolo p=0.032) in the population of rats with chagasic megacolon in relation to the control group. In the cecal segment, this difference was not observed in the result of the total neuron counts (Huceco p=0.289) and nitrergic neurons (NOSececo p=0.466). In the morphometric analysis, considering only the cell body area, a significant difference in the size of the neurons with p=0.000 was observed in the cecal segment. The extensive loss of total neurons that cause predominance of nitrergic neurons contributes to the development of megacolon and neuronal volume increase in the cholinergic neurons, this plasticity does not reestablish the lost equilibrium, causing megacolon.