title: Trypanosoma cruzi infectivity assessment in "in vitro" culture systems by automated cell counting.
abstract: Chagas disease is an endemic, neglected tropical disease in Latin America that is caused by the protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi. In vitro models constitute the first experimental approach to study the physiopathology of the disease and to assay potential new trypanocidal agents. Here, we report and describe clearly the use of commercial software (MATLAB(®)) to quantify T. cruzi amastigotes and infected mammalian cells (BeWo) and compared this analysis with the manual one. There was no statistically significant difference between the manual and the automatic quantification of the parasite; the two methods showed a correlation analysis r(2) value of 0.9159. The most significant advantage of the automatic quantification was the efficiency of the analysis. The drawback of this automated cell counting method was that some parasites were assigned to the wrong BeWo cell, however this data did not exceed 5% when adequate experimental conditions were chosen. We conclude that this quantification method constitutes an excellent tool for evaluating the parasite load in cells and therefore constitutes an easy and reliable ways to study parasite infectivity.
authors.affiliation: Programa de Anatomía y Biología del Desarrollo, Instituto de Ciencias Biomédicas, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Chile, Independencia 1027, Región Metropolitana, Santiago de Chile 8380453, Chile.
authors.forename: Ana
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Liempi
authors.affiliation: Programa de Anatomía y Biología del Desarrollo, Instituto de Ciencias Biomédicas, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Chile, Independencia 1027, Región Metropolitana, Santiago de Chile 8380453, Chile.
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Castillo
authors.affiliation: Programa de Anatomía y Biología del Desarrollo, Instituto de Ciencias Biomédicas, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Chile, Independencia 1027, Región Metropolitana, Santiago de Chile 8380453, Chile.
authors.forename: Mauricio
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Cerda
authors.affiliation: Programa de Anatomía y Biología del Desarrollo, Instituto de Ciencias Biomédicas, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Chile, Independencia 1027, Región Metropolitana, Santiago de Chile 8380453, Chile; Departamento de Estomatología, Facultad de Ciencias de la Salud, Universidad de Talca, Av Lircay s/n, VII Región, Talca 3460000, Chile.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Droguett
authors.affiliation: Programa de Anatomía y Biología del Desarrollo, Instituto de Ciencias Biomédicas, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Chile, Independencia 1027, Región Metropolitana, Santiago de Chile 8380453, Chile.
authors.forename: Juan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Duaso
authors.affiliation: Programa de Anatomía y Biología del Desarrollo, Instituto de Ciencias Biomédicas, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Chile, Independencia 1027, Región Metropolitana, Santiago de Chile 8380453, Chile.
authors.forename: Katherine
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Barahona
authors.affiliation: Programa de Anatomía y Biología del Desarrollo, Instituto de Ciencias Biomédicas, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Chile, Independencia 1027, Región Metropolitana, Santiago de Chile 8380453, Chile.
authors.forename: Ariane
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hernández
authors.affiliation: Department of Histology and Embryology, Faculty of Medicine, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba-INICSA (CONICET), Córdoba X5000, Argentina.
authors.forename: Cintia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Díaz-Luján
authors.affiliation: Department of Histology and Embryology, Faculty of Medicine, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba-INICSA (CONICET), Córdoba X5000, Argentina; IICSHUM and Cathedra of Histology, Embryology and Genetic, Health Department, Universidad Nacional La Rioja, La Rioja X5003, Argentina.
authors.forename: Ricardo
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Fretes
authors.affiliation: Programa de Anatomía y Biología del Desarrollo, Instituto de Ciencias Biomédicas, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Chile, Independencia 1027, Región Metropolitana, Santiago de Chile 8380453, Chile.
authors.forename: Steffen
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Härtel
authors.affiliation: Programa de Anatomía y Biología del Desarrollo, Instituto de Ciencias Biomédicas, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Chile, Independencia 1027, Región Metropolitana, Santiago de Chile 8380453, Chile. Electronic address: ukemmerling@med.uchile.cl.
authors.forename: Ulrike
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Kemmerling
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002452:Cell Count / Q000379:methods; D018929:Cell Culture Techniques; D014355:Chagas Disease / Q000469:parasitology*; D002522:Chlorocebus aethiops; D066298:In Vitro Techniques; D059208:Parasite Load / Q000379:methods*; D012984:Software; D014349:Trypanosoma cruzi / Q000472:pathogenicity*
keywords: Infectivity; Quantification; Trypanosoma cruzi