FIG 3.

Effect of combination treatment with benznidazole plus aspirin (BZ+ASA) on chronic cardiac lesions. BALB/c mice were inoculated with 500 trypomastigotes of T. cruzi by intraperitoneal injection, treated with daily doses of 25 mg/kg BZ or ASA alone or in combination for 30 consecutive days, and euthanized at 180 days postinfection. The antagonist Boc-2 (10 μM/kg) was administered via intraperitoneal injection from 1 day postinfection every 48 h for 7 days before ASA treatment. After 180 days postinjection, the mice were euthanized. Uninfected control (NI) mice were also evaluated. Fibrotic areas in the heart muscles of treated and uninfected mice can be observed in histological sections of the hearts imaged at a magnification of ×40 that are representative of picrosirius red staining patterns. I-NT, infected and untreated; I-BZ, infected and treated with BZ; I-ASA, infected and treated with ASA; I-BZ+ASA, infected and treated with BZ+ASA. Polarized-light images show the fibrotic areas (arrows) in yellow-orange (type I collagen) and green (type III collagen). In the graph, means with different letters are significantly different (P < 0.05; two-way ANOVA with Tukey posttest).