BACKGROUND In August 2006, a case of leptospirosis occurred in an athlete after a triathlon held around Heidelberg and in the Neckar river. In order to study a possible outbreak and to determine risk factors for infection an epidemiological investigation was performed. METHODS Participants of the triathlon were contacted by e-mail and were asked to fill out a standardized questionnaire. In ad...

BACKGROUND Previous studies have identified large breed, male, outdoor dogs of herding or working groups to be at increased risk for Leptospira infection. Exposure risk factors may change over time, altering the signalment of dogs most commonly diagnosed with leptospirosis. OBJECTIVES The objectives of this study were to evaluate possible signalment changes by decade in canine leptospirosis c...

Leptospirosis is an epidemic-prone zoonotic disease that occurs worldwide. In Central America, leptospirosis outbreaks have been reported in almost all countries; Nicaragua in particular has faced several outbreaks. The objective of this study was to stratify the risk and identify "critical areas" for leptospirosis outbreaks in Nicaragua, and to perform an exploratory analysis of potential "dri...

INTRODUCTION Leptospirosis is a re-emerging infectious disease whose prevalence is often underestimated, not only in Colombia, but in most developing countries. The objective of this paper is to assess the research status of leptospirosis in Colombia in order to identify trends, knowledge gaps, and directions for future research. METHODOLOGY With the aim of gathering all the information avail...

Leptospirosis has been so far poorly described in Cambodia and is probably underdiagnosed in the current local medical practices, although conditions to its active circulation exist in this country. Between June 2006 and July 2007, 612 patients admitted to Takeo hospital and Calmette hospital in Phnom Penh presenting clinical symptoms compatible with leptospirosis, were recruited for biological...

background: leptospirosis is the most common zoonosis widespread in tropical and temperate countries with low social-economic status. we aimed to compare an elisa kit with an in-house elisa assay to test the serum samples of the patients who were suspicious of leptospirosis according to their clinical symptoms.   methods: a total of 282 serum samples of patients suspicious of leptospirosis admi...

BACKGROUND Parameters predicting the evolution of leptospirosis would be useful for clinicians, as well as to better understand severe leptospirosis, but are scarce and rarely validated. Because severe leptospirosis includes septic shock, similarities with predictors evidenced for sepsis and septic shock were studied in a hamster model. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Using an LD50 model of le...

It has long been known that pathogenic Leptospira can mobilize the immune system but the specific contribution of neutrophils to control the infectious challenge remains to be clarified. We herein analyzed the phenotype of circulating neutrophils of patients with leptospirosis and healthy controls for the expression of toll-like receptor (TLR) type 2 (TLR2, to sense the leptospiral LPS) and sev...

BACKGROUND Dengue fever and leptospirosis have partially overlapping geographic distributions, similar clinical presentations and potentially life-threatening complications but require different treatments. Distinguishing between these cosmopolitan emerging pathogens represents a diagnostic dilemma of global importance. We hypothesized that perturbations in host biomarkers can differentiate bet...

Certain arthropod-borne infections are common in tropical regions because of favorable climatic conditions. Water-borne infections like leptospirosis are common due to contamination of water especially during the monsoon floods. Infections like malaria, leptospirosis, dengue fever and typhus sometimes cause life threatening organ dysfunction and have several overlapping features. Most patients ...