Ohio University Today, Spring 1999 - Every day an expedition - Researcher breaks ground against deadly Chagas' disease

By Kelli Whitlock

Photos by Kelli Whitlock
RIGHT: Mario Grijalva takes a break while guiding an Ohio University workshop team through the Amazon rain forest.
Mario Grijalva makes his way over the trails in the Amazon rain forest with ease. He’s been here before. Perhaps not on these same trails in Jatun Sacha, a biological preserve on the eastern side of Ecuador, but certainly on jungle paths like them.

Every so often, he issues warnings about poisonous ants or snakes, mindful of those in his group who are new to this environme nt and not as cautious as they should be. Some have dressed too warmly for the humid climate, some are carrying packs he thinks are too heavy. They should have followed his lead: thin cotton shirt, lightweight pants, white straw hat and small black shoulder bag, lightly packed with a water bottle and a few pieces of fruit.

There was a time when he had more opportunities to hike through his country’s Amazon forests. But that was before he came to Ohio University to pursue a doctoral degree in biologi cal sciences, which he received in June 1997. His studies led him to his current post with the Division of Parasitic Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. From his home there, the jungles of Ecuador and the communities where he played as a child seem far away.

“Ecuador is such a diverse place,” Grijalva says. “Its people, coast, mountains and rain forest make it a very special and mystical place for me.”

In many ways, Grijalva finds in his Atlanta labs the same s ense of adventure a hike in the jungle may inspire. It’s a love of science that makes his work exciting, an interest he’s had since he was a child in Quito, Ecuador, participating in school science fairs. His studies today have an even closer tie to his native country. In Atlanta, he is researching the molecular biology of Chagas’ disease, an illness that affects 16 million to 18 million Latin Americans.

The disease, for which there is no cure or vaccine, is caused by a parasite transmitted by blood -sucking bugs called triatomids. Chagas causes a range of health problems, including enlargement of the heart, liver or spleen. Children and the elderly are prone to acute illnesses following infection, but most people do not develop health problems for many years. In these cases, 27 percent of infected persons develop heart problems that can be fatal.

When Grijalva came to Ohio University in 1992, a recent graduate of Quito’s Catholic University, he knew little about Chagas’ disease. That changed du ring his first rotation as a doctoral student in the lab of Edwin Rowland, an associate professor of microbiology and co-director of the university’s Tropical Disease Institute. Rowland’s research team studies Chagas.

“It was my first rotation, and my last,” Grijalva says.

LEFT: Grijalva shows children of an Ecuador village a photograph he just took of them with a digital camera.
A few months after he began working in Rowland’s lab, Grijalva accompanied a group from the institute to Ecuador. The team collected blood samples from the Red Cross in Quito to use as control samples for their study of Chagas. But when Grijalva returned to Athens and tested the samples, three of 10 were positive for Chagas disease. They returned to Ecuador and collected more samples. More tested positive. In fact, his studies suggested 6 percent to 10 percent of the blood supply was conta minated.

“The blood bank in Quito processes about 50 percent of all the donor blood in Ecuador,” Grijalva says, and all of the people who received this Chagas-tainted blood were at risk of infection. Several tests are available to screen blood supplies for Chagas, but they are expensive and unreliable.

Working with Rowland, Grijalva developed a screening test for Chagas, one that drew on conventional techniques but used an antigen created in Rowland’s lab. The group transferred the technolog y to Quito’s Red Cross officials, who began using it in July 1994. Within two years, the contamination level dropped to 0.01 percent. Nearly 300,000 units have been screened to date.

“While all this was going on, I started to see the support from the institute and the university to take what we were learning in our labs and use it to help people,” Grijalva says. “That’s when I knew I had come to the right place and that this was what I wanted to do. It was a turning point.”

In May, Grijalva will return to what he calls “the right place,” this time as a biomedical sciences faculty member in the College of Osteopathic Medicine. Once back in Athens, Grijalva will work with Rowland and others in the college’s Tropical Disease Institute who study Chagas’ disease, a project that will require travels to his home country to track the illness’ spread there.

Grijalva calls his trips to Ecuador “strong medicine.” The places he visits and the people he meets remind him of the importance of his work with Chagas and the need for better disease monitoring, a vital step toward proper treatment of the illness.

“We live in a very small world,” he says. “What happens in Ecuador is important to me, for sure. But what happens in all of South America has a strong impact on people in Athens, Ohio, and on the world.”

< i>Kelli Whitlock, the university’s director of research communications, accompanied the OU-COM group to Ecuador.