background: zoonotic cutaneous leishmaniasis (zcl) due to leishmania major is increasing in many parts of iran. this disease originally is a disease found in gerbils. leishmania parasites are transmitted by sandflies that live and breed in gerbil burrows. nested pcr amplified leishmania its1-5.8s rrna gene in both main reservoir host “rhombomys opimus” and in the “phlebotomus papatasi” main vec...

Following an epidemiological survey of zoonotic cutaneous leishmaniasis (ZCL) in several villages of Badrood, a rural district north of the city of Natanz, central Iran, Phlebotomus (Phlebotomus) papatasi Scopoli were found to be naturally infected with Leishmania (Leishmania) major zymodeme MON-26. Sand flies were collected and dissected biweekly from rodent burrows from May to October 2001. L...

Elucidating the evolution of Phlebotominae is important not only to revise their taxonomy, but also to help understand the origin of the genus Leishmania and its relationship with humans. Our study is a phenetic portrayal of this history based on the genetic relationships among some New Word and Old Word taxa. We used both multilocus enzyme electrophoresis and morphometry on 24 male specimens o...

This article deals with the case histories of two Kala-azar patients treated in ward 3 of the No. 4 Social Insurance children's Hospital in Tehran.  Full details of the disease and treatment have been reported : The First Case was a 4 years old female frcm Abadan. Symptoms preeent on admission were: paleness, fever, weight-loss, shivering, hepatosplenomegaly, oedema and tachycardia. Initial ex...

leishmaniasis has long been known as a significant public health challenge in many parts of iran. phlebotomus pa­patasi and p. sergent i are the vectors of zoonotic cutaneous leishmaniasis and anthroponotic cutaneous leish­maniasis respectively, and 5 species of sand flies including p. kandelakii , p. neglectus , p. perfiliewi , p. keshishiani and p. alexandri are considered as probable vectors...

Cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) is prevalent in the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula and previous research has consistently documented the etiologic agent to be Leishmania major. We report the first isolation of Leishmania tropica from human cases of CL in a Northern Sinai community bordering Palestine. Parasite culturing, real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR), gene sequencing, and restriction fragmen...