Background – The use of biotherapies in Trypanosoma cruzi infection can provide an understanding about effects of these highly diluted medications.
Objectives – To evaluate different treatment schemes and dynamizations of biotherapies prepared from blood trypomastigotes (buffy coat) in mice infected with T. cruzi.
Methods – Swiss mice infected with Y strain of T. cruzi were divided into two experiments. Experiment 1, all treated groups received biotherapy 7dH (10 μL/mL ad libitum) in different treatment schemes: TB7dH – treated 3 days before infection; TBA7dH – treated 3 days before and after infection; TBAe.d.7dH – treated 3 days before infection and every day after infection and IC – infection control. Experiment 2, all treated groups received medication in different dynamizations 3 days before and after infection (10 μL/mL ad libitum): TBA15dH – treated with biotherapy 15dH; TBA16dH – treated with biotherapy 16dH; TBA17dH – treated with biotherapy 17dH; TBAp.chords – treated with biotherapy ‘potency chords’ and IC – infection control. We evaluated parasitological and clinical parameters.
Results – Experiment 1 showed that different treatment schemes with biotherapy 7dH produced different effects on infection evolution. TBA7dH group had the best outcome, with lower parasitemia, higher survival, and better clinical evolution compared to IC. Experiment 2 showed that biotherapy ‘potency chords’ had effects different from the individual dynamizations that it contained (15dH, 16dH, and 17dH). Animals that had patent parasitemia had delayed emergence of parasites in blood and subsequent increase in parasitemia, but had better clinical evolution compared to IC.
Conclusions – The effects of T. cruzi biotherapies depend on frequency at which they are administered, dynamization, and host–parasite relationship/individual susceptibility of treated organism. Biotherapy appeared to transfer to infected organism ‘antigenic information’ related to parasite and ‘disease information’ related to molecules produced by host’s immune response and contained in the buffy coat used to prepare the medication.