27 Facts About Carlos Chagas

Carlos Chagas described the two pathogens in 1909, while he was working at the Oswaldo Cruz Institute in Rio de Janeiro, and named the former Trypanosoma cruzi to honour his friend Oswaldo Cruz.

Carlos Chagas's work holds a unique place in the history of medicine.

Carlos Chagas was the first to discover and illustrate the parasitic fungal genus Pneumocystis, which later became infamous for being linked to pneumocystis pneumonia in AIDS patients.

Carlos Chagas was the eldest of four children, and his father died when he was four years old.

Carlos Chagas entered the School of Mining Engineering at Ouro Preto, but suffered from beri-beri in 1895 that incapacitated him to continue.

Carlos Chagas graduated in 1902 with a dissertation on malaria and earned his doctorate the following year with a thesis on Estudos Hematologicos do Impaludismo.

Carlos Chagas's published work on this method served as the basis of prevention of malaria all over the world, and was adopted by a service of the Ministry of Health in Brazil, which was established expressly for this purpose.

In 1906, Carlos Chagas returned to Rio de Janeiro and joined the Oswaldo Cruz Institute, where he worked for the rest of his life.

Carlos Chagas discovered that the intestines of these insects harbored flagellate protozoans, a new species of the genus Trypanosoma, and was able to prove experimentally that it could be transmitted to marmoset monkeys that were bitten by the infected bug.

Carlos Chagas named this new parasite Trypanosoma cruzi in honor of Oswaldo Cruz and later that year as Schizotrypanum cruzi, and then as Trypanosoma cruzi.

Carlos Chagas then looked for a girl, later identified as Berenice Soares de Moura, a two-year-old girl whom he had seen in the same hut where that cat had been a few weeks before.

Carlos Chagas took Berenice's blood samples on 14 April 1909, discovering for the first time the same Trypanosoma parasite in the human blood.

Carlos Chagas observed parasitic inclusions in the brain and myocardium, which would explain some of the clinical manifestations in diseased people, and closed the proposed lifecycle of the parasite by suggesting that the armadillo could be its natural reservoir.

Carlos Chagas persuaded Argentine physician Salvador Mazza to research the epidemic, leading to the latter's confirmation of the existence of Trypanosoma cruzi in Argentina in 1927, and eventually to government action.

Carlos Chagas made an autopsy report of an individual with heart failure whom he found to have heavy trypanosome infection that was associated with blood cell accumulation in the heart.

Carlos Chagas was the first to discover the parasitic fungal genus Pneumocystis in the lungs of his experimentally trypanosome-infected guinea pigs.

Carlos Chagas described in it that the parasite was associated with another protozoan but which he could not identify.

Carlos Chagas followed the literature closely and quickly confirmed the distinction, whereupon he again adopted the name Trypanosoma cruzi for the protozoan.

One of his sons, Carlos Chagas Filho, became an eminent and internationally recognized scientist in the field of neurophysiology and president of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

Carlos Chagas's name is honoured by the important biomedical institution Instituto Evandro Chagas, in Belem, state of Para.

Carlos Chagas created a nursing school and was the founder of the concept of sanitary medicine, the first chairman of tropical medicine and the graduate study of hygiene.

Carlos Chagas died in Rio de Janeiro from a heart attack in 1934 at 55 years of age.

Carlos Chagas was elected to the National Academy of Medicine and received the prestigious Schaudinn Prize for the best work in protozoology and tropical medicine, on June 22,1912.

Carlos Chagas was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, in 1913 and 1921, but never received any.

In 1922, Carlos Chagas became member of the Health Committee of the League of Nations.

Carlos Chagas' discovery was recognized at home and abroad as one of the most important achievements in parasitology.

Carlos Chagas was nominated for the Nobel Prize each time by only a single Brazilian nominator.