Researchers in Brazil who analyzed samples from a 46-year-old patient in the Northeast state of Maranhão found an amphotericin B-resistant strain of the parasite Leishmania amazonensis circulating for the first time in the ...
Aug 15, 2024
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A discovery by Simona Stäger's team could help come up with a treatment for the most serious form of leishmaniasis. Leishmaniasis is a tropical disease affecting a growing number of people worldwide. Each year, between 700,000 ...
May 21, 2024
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For the first time, scientists have begun to figure out why the disfiguring skin lesions caused by cutaneous leishmaniasis don't hurt.
Nov 30, 2023
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In recent years, physicians and scientists in parts of Brazil where visceral leishmaniasis (VL) is endemic have seen rising numbers of cases of co-infection by Leishmania infantum and Crithidia, also a protozoan but hitherto ...
Nov 2, 2023
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The parasitic disease leishmaniasis is found primarily in Central and South America, the Mediterranean region, the Middle East, and Central Asia and is transmitted to humans by a sand fly. An estimated 1.5 million new cases ...
Oct 24, 2023
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Scientists have new evidence that a tropical disease once seen almost exclusively in returning travelers is now being detected in the United States in people with no international travel history—and caused by a Leishmania ...
Oct 19, 2023
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Scientists have established the effectiveness of vaccines they developed to prevent the disfiguring skin disease leishmaniasis in animal studies, and Phase 1 human trial planning is in motion for the most promising candidate.
Aug 31, 2023
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The first case of concomitant visceral leishmaniasis and non-ulcerated cutaneous leishmaniasis in the same patient has been reported recently by researchers at the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar) in São Paulo ...
Aug 8, 2023
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Togo had reason to celebrate in 2022 when it became the first country in the world to eliminate four neglected tropical diseases. The west African nation stamped out Guinea worm disease in 2011, lymphatic filariasis in 2017, ...
Jan 27, 2023
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A shorter, and less toxic treatment for people with visceral leishmaniasis was shown to be effective thanks to a study conducted in Eastern Africa by the non-profit medical research organization Drugs for Neglected Diseases ...
Sep 29, 2022
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Leishmaniasis is a disease caused by protozoan parasites that belong to the genus Leishmania and is transmitted by the bite of certain species of sand fly (subfamily Phlebotominae). Although the majority of the literature mentions only one genus transmitting Leishmania to humans (Lutzomyia) in the Americas, a 2003 study by Galati suggested a new classification for the New World sand flies, elevating several subgenera to the genus level. Elsewhere in the world, the genus Phlebotomus is considered the vector of leishmaniasis.
Most forms of the disease are transmissible only from animals (zoonosis), but some can be spread between humans. Human infection is caused by about 21 of 30 species that infect mammals. These include the L. donovani complex with three species (L. donovani, L. infantum, and L. chagasi); the L. mexicana complex with four main species (L. mexicana, L. amazonensis, and L. venezuelensis); L. tropica; L. major; L. aethiopica; and the subgenus Viannia with four main species (L. (V.) braziliensis, L. (V.) guyanensis, L. (V.) panamensis, and L. (V.) peruviana). The different species are morphologically indistinguishable, but they can be differentiated by isoenzyme analysis, DNA sequence analysis, or monoclonal antibodies.
Cutaneous leishmaniasis is the most common form of leishmaniasis. Visceral leishmaniasis is a severe form in which the parasites have migrated to the vital organs.
This text uses material from Wikipedia licensed under CC BY-SA
