{"doi":"10.1093/infdis/jiac495","title":"B-Cell Responses in Chronic Chagas Disease: Waning of <i>Trypanosoma cruzi</i>–Specific Antibody-Secreting Cells Following Successful Etiological Treatment","abstract":"BACKGROUND: A drawback in the treatment of chronic Chagas disease (American trypanosomiasis) is the long time required to achieve complete loss of serological reactivity, the standard for determining treatment efficacy. METHODS: Antibody-secreting cells and memory B cells specific for Trypanosoma cruzi and their degree of differentiation were evaluated in adult and pediatric study participants with chronic Chagas disease before and after etiological treatment. RESULTS: T. cruzi-specific antibody-secreting cells disappeared from the circulation in benznidazole or nifurtimox-treated participants with declining parasite-specific antibody levels after treatment, whereas B cells in most participants with unaltered antibody levels were low before treatment and did not change after treatment. The timing of the decay in parasite-specific antibody-secreting B cells was similar to that in parasite-specific antibodies, as measured by a Luminex-based assay, but preceded the decay in antibody levels detected by conventional serology. The phenotype of total B cells returned to a noninfection profile after successful treatment. CONCLUSIONS: T. cruzi-specific antibodies in the circulation of chronically T. cruzi-infected study participants likely derive from both antigen-driven plasmablasts, which disappear after successful treatment, and long-lived plasma cells, which persist and account for the low frequency and long course to complete seronegative conversion in successfully treated participants.","journal":"The Journal of Infectious Diseases","year":2022,"id":279060,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":6,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9662,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":741980,"name":"María A. Natale","orcid":"0000-0001-5508-9266","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":741982,"name":"María C. Albareda","orcid":"0000-0001-8256-8844","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":741984,"name":"M Alvarez","orcid":"0000-0003-4193-9148","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":742655,"name":"Bruno Lococo","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":952659,"name":"Ana M. De Rissio","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":912404,"name":"Marisa Fernández","orcid":"0000-0003-1789-4584","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":741983,"name":"Melisa D. Castro Eiro","orcid":"0000-0003-0780-8937","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":742657,"name":"Graciela Bertocchi","orcid":null,"position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":343807,"name":"Brooke E. White","orcid":"0000-0002-0441-1355","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":952660,"name":"F Zabaleta","orcid":null,"position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":758066,"name":"Rodolfo Viotti","orcid":null,"position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":343808,"name":"Rick L. Tarleton","orcid":"0000-0002-9589-5243","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":741985,"name":"Susana A. Laucella","orcid":"0000-0001-5224-5446","position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":742656,"name":"Gonzalo César","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":38,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T00:28:51.322666Z","pmid":"36571148","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}