Parasites belonging to Leishmania braziliensis, Leishmania donovani, Leishmania mexicana complexes and Trypanosoma cruzi (clones 20 and 39) were searched in blood, lesions and strains collected from 28 patients with active cutaneous leishmaniasis and one patient with visceral leishmaniasis. PCR-hybridization with specific probes of Leishmania complexes (L. braziliensis, L. donovani and L. mexic...

An important area in the cell biology of intracellular parasitism is the customization of parasitophorous vacuoles (PVs) by prokaryotic or eukaryotic intracellular microorganisms. We were curious to compare PV biogenesis in primary mouse bone marrow-derived macrophages exposed to carefully prepared amastigotes of either Leishmania major or L. amazonensis. While tight-fitting PVs are housing one...

BACKGROUND Cutaneous leishmaniasis constitutes a major public health problem in many parts of the world including Iran. The primary objective of this study was to identify Leishmania species in endemic districts of Kerman Province, south-eastern Iran. METHODS This study was conducted by random sampling as cross- sectional descriptive between 2008 and 2010. Overall, 203 skin scraping smears we...

Amplification of internal transcript spacer 1 of ribosomal RNA (ITS1-RNA) gene followed by RFLP analysis and sequencing was used to identify the causing agents of cutaneous and visceral leishmaniasis (CL and VL) in humans and animal reservoir hosts from various geographical areas in Iran. We also used random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD-PCR) to obtain polymorphisms among isolates of Leishman...

sand fly research has a long history in iran beginning with the work of adler, theodor and lourie in 1930 and followed by mesghali’s foundational taxonomic work on sand flies in 1943. since then, research has continued unabated throughout the country and official publications report the existence of at least 44 species of sand flies (26 of the genus phlebotomus and 18 of genus sergentomyia ) in...

it is well accepted that in experimental model of leishmania major infection, balb/c mice mount a th2 response and produce igg1 predominantly whereas c57bl/6mice enhance th1 response with the biased production of igg2a antibodies. therefore, screening for parasite antigens on the basis of reactivity with sera from infected susceptible or resistant mice might be used for the identification of th...

The intracellular parasite Leishmania causes a wide spectrum of human disease, ranging from self-resolving cutaneous lesions to fatal visceral disease, depending on the species of Leishmania involved. The mechanisms by which different Leishmania species cause different pathologies are largely unknown. We have addressed this question by comparing the gene expression profiles of bone marrow-deriv...

OBJECTIVES Leishmania can lead to a broad spectrum of diseases, collectively known as leishmaniasis. The A2 gene/ protein family could be one of the most eligible candidate factors of virulence in visceral leishmaniasis (VL). The previous results confirmed that in Leishmania infantum, several A2 proteins are abundantly expressed by the amastigote, but not the promastigote stage. As there are no...

BACKGROUND In the northeast and central parts of Iran, Rhombomys opimus (great gerbil) is the primary reservoir host of zoonotic cutaneous leishmaniasis (ZCL). This study used both parasitological and molecular methods to identify Leishmania spp. and their different haplotypes that were circulating in the great gerbil populations in ZCL foci from northeastern Iran. METHODS A cross-sectional s...

Leishmania is a genus of protozoan parasites causing a wide clinical spectrum of diseases in humans. Analysis of a region of chromosome 6 from Leishmania major (Iribar et al.) showed that the transcript of a putative L19 ribosomal protein (RPL19) was most abundant at the amastigote stage. We therefore decided to characterize L19 protein abundance throughout the lifecycle of Leishmania. Differen...