During its life cycle, Leishmania undergoes extreme environmental changes, alternating between insect vectors and vertebrate hosts. Elevated temperature and decreased pH, conditions encountered after macrophage invasion, can induce axenic differentiation of avirulent promastigotes into virulent amastigotes. Here we show that iron uptake is a major trigger for the differentiation of Leishmania a...

A 5-month old puppy with muco-cutaneous lesions in the chin, around lips and eyes was examined physically and microscopically for leishmaniasis. Muco-cutaneous lesions containing a large number of amastigotes of Leishmania spp. were observed. Amastigotes were also detected in liver and spleen of the puppy. The animal was positive with Dipstick rK39 kit and high level of anti-Leishmania antibodi...

fractions obtained from partitioning of aerial methanolic extract of euphorbia aellenii with chloroform (e2), ethyl acetate (e3), n-butanol (e4) and water (e5) were investigated in vitro for their phytotoxicity, insecticidal, anti-leishmanial, cytotoxicity, antibacterial and antifungal activities. sample e2 appeared to have significant phytotoxic activity. in the insecticidal screening study on...

Leishmania braziliensis and Leishmania amazonensis are both causative agents of cutaneous leishmaniasis in South America. However, patient prognosis and the host immune response differ considerably depending on the infecting parasite species. The mechanisms underlying these differences appear to be multifactorial, with both host and parasite components contributing to disease outcome. As neutro...

It was recently hypothesized that Leishmania amastigotes could constitute a semi-quiescent stage characterized by low replication and reduced metabolic activity. This concept developed with Leishmania (Leishmania) mexicana and Leishmania (Leishmania) major models might explain numerous clinical and sub-clinical features of Leishmania (Viannia) braziliensis infections, like reactivation of the d...

There are many strategies to control leishmaniasis, but majority of them are inadequate. Killed Leishmania vaccine (KLV) has been applied for its immunogenicity in human and mouse model. Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) as adjuvant is an immune-modulator inducing humoral and cellular immune responses during zoonotic cutaneous leishmaniasis (ZCL). Both KLV and BCG have been applied for their immun...

Currently available drugs for treatment of Leishmania infections are highly toxic and drug resistance to first line therapies has been observed. New, safer and more effective drugs are urgently needed to improve clinical resolution of the disease and reduce the risks associated with it. High-throughput screening of new compounds against cultured promastigotes is easy to perform, but the results...

The need for drug combinations to treat visceral leishmaniasis (VL) arose because of resistance to antimonials, the toxicity of current treatments and the length of the course of therapy. Calcium channel blockers (CCBs) have shown anti-leishmanial activity; therefore their use in combination with standard drugs could provide new alternatives for the treatment of VL. In this work, in vitro isobo...

objective(s) aristolochia indica has been widely used in the traditional medicine for the treatment of a variety of diseases. in the present study different extracts of roots of a. indica were evaluated for their anti­inflammatory, antipruritic and mast cell stabilizing activity. materials and methods anti-inflammatory activity was performed by compound 48/80 induced rat paw edema model and ant...