Leishmaniasis is a devastating disease that disfigures or kills nearly two million people each year. Establishment and persistence of infection by the obligate intracellular parasite Leishmania requires repeated uptake by macrophages and other phagocytes. Therefore, preventing uptake could be a novel therapeutic strategy for leishmaniasis. Amastigotes, the life cycle stage found in the human ho...

Using a 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide microassay, previously described as a means of quantifying Leishmania amazonensis in vitro at the amastigote stage (D. Sereno and J. L. Lemesre, Parisitol. Res., in press), we have compared the activities of seven drugs, including those currently used to treat leishmaniasis, against axenically grown amastigote and promastigote...

BACKGROUND Currently, a major problem in the management of visceral leishmaniasis or kala-azar, especially in the Indian subcontinent, is the growing unresponsiveness to conventional antimonial therapy. Membrane bound pyrophophatase (PPases) do not exist in plasma membrane from mammals. Thus, H(+)-PPases from Leishmania plasma membrane might be potential target in rational chemotherapy of the d...

Leishmania donovani are the causative agents of kala-azar in humans. They undergo a developmental program following changes in the environment, resulting in the reversible transformation between the extracellular promastigote form in the sand fly vector and the obligatory intracellular amastigote form in phagolysosomes of macrophages. A host-free differentiation system for L. donovani was used ...

Theracurmin is a nanoparticle formulation derived from curcumin, bioactive compound known for its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. Trypanosoma cruzi, the etiological agent of Chagas disease, triggers an intense inflammatory response in mammals also causes severe tissue damage. To evaluate immunomodulatory antiparasitic effects Theracurmin, Swiss mice were experimentally infected wi...

Proteins of the SIR2 (Silent Information Regulator 2) family are characterized by a conserved catalytic domain that exerts unique NAD(+)-dependent deacetylase activity on histones and various other cellular substrates. Previous reports from us have identified a Leishmania infantum gene encoding a cytosolic protein termed LiSIR2RP1 (Leishmania infantum SIR2-related protein 1) that belongs to the...

Leishmania (Leishmania) amazonensis exhibits peculiarities in its interactions with hosts. Because amastigotes are the primary form associated with the progression of infection, we studied the effect of insulin-like growth factor (IGF)-I on interactions between L. (L.) amazonensis amastigotes and macrophages. Upon stimulation of infected macrophages with IGF-I, we observed decreased nitric oxid...

The role played by dendritic cells (DCs) in Leishmania donovani infection is poorly understood. Here, we report that L. donovani amastigotes efficiently infect human peripheral-blood monocyte-derived DCs. Opsonization with normal human serum enhanced the infectivity of amastigotes and promastigotes only marginally. Surface attachment versus internalization was distinguished by incubation of DCs...