The Amazon forest is being exploited for timber production. The harvest removes trees, used by sand flies as resting sites, and decreases the canopy, used as refuges by some hosts. The present study evaluated the impact of the timber harvest, the abundance of sand flies, and their trypanosomatid infection rates before and after selective logging. The study was accomplished in terra-firme produc...

BACKGROUND Research in our laboratory has previously shown that immune-mediated transmission blocking may be applied to Leishmania infections and that the LPG molecule and anti-LPG monoclonal antibodies was found to be an excellent candidate against L. major infections. OBJECTIVE To test the effect of monoclonal antibodies (MABs) raised against different species of Leishmania for their abilit...

BACKGROUND Visceral Leishmaniasis is a serious human disease transmitted, in the New World, by Lutzomyia longipalpis sand flies. Natural resistance to Leishmania transmission in residents of endemic areas has been attributed to the acquisition of immunity to sand fly salivary proteins. One theoretical way to accelerate the acquisition of this immunity is to increase the density of antigen-prese...

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 been 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...

Phlebotomine sand flies that transmit the protozoan parasite Leishmania differ greatly in their ability to support different parasite species or strains in the laboratory: while some show considerable selectivity, others are more permissive. In "selective" sand flies, Leishmania binding and survival in the fly midgut typically depends upon the abundant promastigote surface adhesin lipophosphogl...

We studied the development of antimony-resistant Leishmania infantum in natural vectors Lutzomyia longipalpis and Phlebotomus perniciosus to ascertain the risk of parasite transmission by sand flies. All three resistant strains produced fully mature late-stage infections in sand flies; moreover, the resistant phenotype was maintained after the passage through the vector. These results highlight...

Disordered urbanization and deforestation are the main activities proposed as causal factors of re-emergence of American cutaneous leishmaniasis caused by Leishmania braziliensis. The purpose of this work was to investigate, in the hyperendemic area of Argentina, the distribution of Phlebotomine sand flies at the modified primary vegetation-crop interface, as one of the potential sites where th...

BACKGROUND Sand flies of subgenus Adlerius has a wide geographical distribution in Iran and are mostly found in wild form in mountainous areas. They are always considered as probable vectors of visceral leishmaniasis. The objective of this study was to determine the Adlerius species and its composition in an endemic focus of zoonotic visceral leishmaniasis in northwest of the country. METHODS...

Sugar meals of plant origin are an important component of the sand fly diet. We show that sugar solution baits have potential as vehicles for phlebotomine sand fly control. In the laboratory, adult Phlebotomus duboscqi Neveu-Lemaire and Sergentomyia schwetzi (Adler, Theodor, and Parrot) that have consumed an aqueous sucrose solution containing Bacillus sphaericus Neide toxins and are subsequent...

BACKGROUND Sand fly saliva has been shown to have proteins with potent biological activities, salivary proteins that can be used as biomarkers of vector exposure, and salivary proteins that are candidate vaccines against different forms of leishmaniasis. Sand fly salivary gland transcriptomic approach has contributed significantly to the identification and characterization of many of these sali...