Ir-(COD)-pentamidine tetraphenylborate which has previously been studied on promastigote forms of Leishmania, was investigated for its antileishmanial properties compared with pentamidine used as reference compound. In vitro, the iridium complex had the same IC50 value on intracellular forms of Leishmania as pentamidine (15 microM). In vivo, the compound could not be injected intravenously due ...

Previous studies showed that two groups of Trypanosoma cruzi clonal genotypes named clonet 20 and clonet 39 were predominant in Triatoma infestans, the unique vector of Chagas disease in Bolivia. These groups of clones correspond to distinct genetic clusters. These clonets were detected in T. infestans and Rhodnius pictipes fecal samples before isolation and after culture by kDNA PCR (polymeras...

Trypanosoma brucei's mitochondrial genome, kinetoplast DNA (kDNA), is a giant network of catenated DNA rings. The network consists of a few thousand 1 kb minicircles and several dozen 23 kb maxicircles. Here we report that TbPIF5, one of T. brucei's six mitochondrial proteins related to Saccharomyces cerevisiae mitochondrial DNA helicase ScPIF1, is involved in minicircle lagging strand synthesi...

Heishui county, located in northwest Sichuan province, southwestern China, is an endemic area of zoonotic visceral leishmaniasis (VL) and is the most intractable area. VL is never destroyed in it. Asymptomatic dogs (Leishmania parasites have been diagnosed but clinically healthy) are considered to be a potential reservoir host in zoonotic VL area, and most can lead to infection of individuals, ...

BACKGROUND The administration of anti-trypanosome nitroderivatives curtails Trypanosoma cruzi infection in Chagas disease patients, but does not prevent destructive lesions in the heart. This observation suggests that an effective treatment for the disease requires understanding its pathogenesis. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS To understand the origin of clinical manifestations of the heart d...

The structure of a C11 peptidase PmC11 from the gut bacterium, Parabacteroides merdae, has recently been determined, enabling the identification and characterization of a C11 orthologue, PNT1, in the parasitic protozoon Trypanosoma brucei. A phylogenetic analysis identified PmC11 orthologues in bacteria, archaea, Chromerids, Coccidia, and Kinetoplastida, the latter being the most divergent. A p...

BACKGROUND Parasitological methods for the diagnosis of Visceral leishmaniasis (VL) require invasive procedures, so serological and molecular approaches have been developed but are not generally applicable in the field. We evaluated a loop mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) assay using blood from VL patients and compared it to nested PCR. METHODS Forty-seven subjects with clinical featu...

Previous work has shown that the kinetoplast minicircle DNA of Leishmania species exhibits species-specific sequence divergence and this observation has led to the development of a DNA probe-based diagnostic test for leishmaniasis. In the work reported here, we demonstrate that the minicircle is composed of three types of DNA sequences with differing specificities reflecting different rates of ...

Purpose: To develop a highly accurate molecular assay for evaluating the efficacy of metronidazole and some antifungal agents with meglumine antimoniate against L. infantum visceral leishmaniasis in different mouse tissues. Methods: The assay was performed with the Light-Cycler system using SYBR Green I and primers amplifying ca. 120-bp fragment from minicircles of the kinetoplast DNA (kDNA).Th...