1. A standardized clinical database for research in Chagas disease: The NHEPACHA network.
- Author
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González Martínez, Adriana, Losada-Galván, Irene, Gabaldón-Figueira, Juan Carlos, Martínez-Peinado, Nieves, Saraiva, Roberto Magalhães, Fernández, Marisa Liliana, Ramsey, Janine M., Noya-González, Oscar, Alarcón de Noya, Belkisyole, Schijman, Alejandro Gabriel, Berón, Soledad, Abril, Marcelo, Gascón, Joaquim, Sosa-Estani, Sergio, Pinazo, María Jesús, Alonso-Padilla, Julio, and Hasslocher-Moreno, Alejandro Marcel
- Subjects
CHAGAS' disease ,MEDICAL research ,RESEARCH personnel ,MEDICAL protocols ,TRYPANOSOMA cruzi - Abstract
The NHEPACHA Iberoamerican Network, founded on the initiative of a group of researchers from Latin American countries and Spain, aims to establish a research framework for Chagas disease that encompasses diagnosis and treatment. For this purpose, the network has created a questionnaire to gather relevant data on epidemiological, clinical, diagnostic, and therapeutic aspects of the disease. This questionnaire was developed based on a consensus of expert members of the network, with the intention of collecting high-quality standardized data, which can be used interchangeably by the different research centers that make up the NHEPACHA network. Furthermore, the network intends to offer a clinical protocol that can be embraced by other researchers, facilitating comparability among published studies, as well as the development of therapeutic response and progression markers. Author summary: In this work, we present a new clinical questionnaire for the standardized evaluation and collection of clinical data from patients with acute or chronic Trypanosoma cruzi infection, as well as a uniformed database to collect it. The questionnaire has been produced after consensus from clinical experts belonging to the NHEPACHA network, a coalition of clinical research institutions in Latin America and Spain. This tool will facilitate the collection and sharing of high-quality clinical and paraclinical data useful to annotate sample collections, and allow clinically meaningful comparisons between different cohorts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2024
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