Domestic vectors of Chagas' disease in three rural communities of Nicaragua Vectores domesticos de la Enfermedad de Chagas en tres comunidades endémicas de Nicarágua

A triatomine survey was conducted in three rural settlements of Nicaragua (Santa Rosa, Quebrada Honda and Poneloya) where Chagas' disease is endemic, to determine rates of house infestation, evaluate the housing condition and to asess the performance of the María sensor box in detection of dome...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Revista do Instituto de Medicina Tropical de São Paulo
Main Authors: Rosário Palma-Guzmán, Teresa Rivera B, William Morales G
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Universidade de São Paulo (USP) 1996
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1590/S0036-46651996000200008
https://doaj.org/article/19582706fe024f639affde9026859b42
Description
Summary:A triatomine survey was conducted in three rural settlements of Nicaragua (Santa Rosa, Quebrada Honda and Poneloya) where Chagas' disease is endemic, to determine rates of house infestation, evaluate the housing condition and to asess the performance of the María sensor box in detection of domestic vectors. A total of 184 households were selected and vectors were sought by the methods of timed manual capture and by sensor boxes. The sole vectors species found in this study was Triatoma dimidiata. Of the examined bugs 50, 60 and 33%, in the respective communities, were infected with T. cruzi. The rates of house infestation as determined by manual capture and sensor boxes were respectively, 48.3% and 54.2% in Santa Rosa, 29.8% and 51.2% in Quebrada Honda and in Poneloya 3.8 and 5.9% with significant difference between the methods in Quebrada Honda. When compared with the manual capture, the Maria sensor box detected vectors in 71.4% of positive houses in two of the communities but also was able to detect bugs in 39.3% and 41.1% of houses where manual capture had been negative. Housing condition was evaluated according to three structural parameters, in this way, in the first community 79.2% of houses were classified as bad, 20.8% as regular; in the second one 42.5% were bad and 57.5% regular, whereas in the third 62.5% of the houses were regular. Rates of infestation did not differ greatly between the different housing conditions. Our results show that the sensor box is as efficient as manual capture and could be implemented in our country. Se efectuó una encuesta de vectores de la enfermedad de Chagas en tres comunidades endémicas de Nicaragua (Santa Rosa, Quebrada Honda y Poneloya) para medir las tasas de infestación domiciliar, evaluar la condición de las viviendas, y determinar la eficacia del biosensor María para detectar los vectores domésticos. Se seleccionaron un total de 184 casas y los vectores se buscaron por los métodos de captura manual estandarizada y biosensor. La única especie vectora encontrada en ...