BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVE Of the two reservoirs of infection of kala-azar i.e., patients of kala-azar and post kala-azar dermal leishmaniasis (PKDL), PKDL provides easy access for the sandfly to pick up the parasites. In the last epidemic of 1977 in India, the importance of PKDL as a potential cause of increase in number of kala-azar cases was ignored. During recent years, we found an increase in ...

uncommon but grave complication. During the recent outbreak of kala-azar in Calcutta that commenced after the Bengal famine of 1943. increasing numbers of seriously complicated cases of kala-azar were seen (Sen Gupta, 1947) and one of the grave complications was pneumococcal meningitis. During the last two years, 1945 and 1946, four cases of kala-azar who had developed this complication were ad...

In the Indian Medical Gazette for June 1927, Chopra, Gupta, and David described a new serum test for kala-azar. These workers observed that when certain organic compounds of antimony were brought in contact with the serum from kala-azar patients in a miniature testtube, a thick flocculent precipitate was formed at the junction of the two; whereas with nonkala-azar sera no such precipitation occ...

Visceral leishmaniasis (kala-azar) continues to be a major rural public health problem in Bangladesh. A cross-sectional study was carried out in two subdistricts of Mymensingh district from January 2006 to June 2007 to evaluate the delay kala-azar treatment. Suspected patients who attended to out patient department (OPD) were subjected to a dipstick test (RK39) for kala-azar. Sixty five from Bh...

BACKGROUND We evaluated the diagnostic accuracy as well as the reproducibility of the urine latex agglutination test 'KAtex' in the diagnosis of kala-azar in patients recruited at a tertiary care centre in Dharan, Nepal, between November 2000 and January 2002. METHODS All patients presenting with fever of 2 weeks or more and splenomegaly were consecutively enrolled. Bone marrow and--if negati...

1. Smears from the nasal cavities of fifteen patients suffering from kala-azar have been examined and in nine of these typical Leishman-Donovan bodies have been found. 2. Smears from the surface of the tonsil and from the saliva in one of the above nine cases showed the presence of leishmania. The tonsils of this patient, who died as the result of kala-azar and secondary infection, at autopsy w...

BACKGROUND Kala-azar is a multisystem infection of the reticuloendothelial system. Various hematologic abnormalities have been described in kala-azar including hemophagocytic syndrome (HPS).  METHODS We reviewed bone marrow aspirate smears from 18 documented cases of kala-azar complicated by HPS.  RESULTS The bone marrow smears were hypercellular with erythroid hyperplasia. Megaloblastic ch...

INTRODUCTION Elimination of kala-azar is planned for South Asia requiring good surveillance along with other strategies. We assessed surveillance in Gaffargaon upazila (a subdistrict of 13 unions) of Mymensingh district, Bangladesh highly endemic for kala-azar. METHODS In 4703 randomly sampled households, within nine randomly sampled villages, drawn from three randomly sampled unions, we acti...

11 Summary Despite the fact that anemia is one of the most striking clinical features of visceral leishmaniasis (kala-azar), the factors involved in the pathogenesis are not fully understood. The cause of anemia seen in these patients is often multifactorial including sequestration and destruction of the erythrocytes in the enlarged spleen, hemophagocytosis and alterations in erythrocyte membra...

Enteric fever(l) and Kala-azar (vis-ceral leishmaniasis) are endemic, in and around Patna. Kala-azar usually has an indolent course but it can present as an acute disease with fever, anorexia and vomiting(2,3). At times both the diseases are so closely similar in their presentation , that differential diagnosis is not always clear, Widal test, inspite of its limitations and fallacies is still w...