The study, published in the journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, demonstrated a screening strategy potentially could be much more efficient, cost-effective and viable than current disease control programs focusing on insecticide spraying.

Michael Levy of Emory University and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, both in Atlanta, and colleagues said Trypanosoma cruzi, the parasites that cause Chagas disease, are carried by triatomine bugs that infest houses in poor communities.

The researchers performed a serological survey in children 2 to 18 years old living in Arequipa, Peru, where a vector control -- insecticide spraying -- campaign currently is disrupting transmission of T. cruzi and 5.3 percent of children had already been infected.

The researchers then related their findings to data that had been collected during the vector control campaign -- entomological, spatial and census data -- and found that using the data they could target diagnostic testing that would identify more than 83 percent of the infected children by testing 22 percent of eligible children.