Visceral leishmaniasis or kala-azar is an endemic parasitic disease in some parts of the world which is characterized by fever, splenomegaly, and pancytopenia in most of the cases. Herein we report an 11 month-old male infant with diagnosis of kala-azar who presented with pallor, hepatosplenomegaly, failure to gain weight, and no history of fever. Surprisingly, fever started after beginning of ...

Introduction.?About eighteen months ago, we (Napier and Sen, 1940) published a preliminary paper on the treatment of kala-azar by 4 : 4'-diamidino stilbene. At the time our paper was sent to press, there were in the literature? that had arrived in this country?only two detailed reports on cases treated by this drug (Adams and Yorke, 1939; and Adler and Rachmilewitz, 1939). Since then a small sp...

BACKGROUND Visceral leishmaniasis (VL), commonly known as kala-azar is a systemic disease caused by parasitic protozoan species of genus Leishmania and transmitted by species of Phlebotomus (sand flies). It is a poverty-related disease and associated with malnutrition, displacement, poor housing, weakness of the immune system and lack of resources. For the success of prevention and control prog...

Kala-azar as a distinct clinical entity has been recognized in this country for about a century. A number of epidemics occurred in Bengal, and though it was in early stages confused with malaria, failure to respond to specific treatment led to the establishment of its separate entity. This was confirmed in 1903 by the discovery of Leishman-Donovan bodies? the causative organism, by W. B. Leishm...

BACKGROUND Known as 'neglected disease' because relatively little effort has been applied to finding cures, leishmaniasis kills more than 150,000 people every year and debilitates millions more. Visceral leishmaniasis (VL), also called Kala Azar (KA) or black fever in India, claims around 20,000 lives every year. Whole genome analysis presents an excellent means to identify new targets for drug...

Pathogenesis in kala-azar is associated with depressed cellular immunity and significant elevation of antileishmanial antibodies. Since these antibodies are present even after cure, analysis of the parasite-specific isotypes and immunoglobulin G (IgG) subclasses in kala-azar patients may shed new light on the immune responses during progression and resolution of infection. Using leishmanial mem...

Case report of a patient with rheumatoid arthritis who developed severe neutropenia, splenomegaly and was diagnosed with Felty's syndrome. The patient later developed Kala-azar. Both diseases have similar clinical and laboratory presentation, making the differential diagnosis difficult. The present case report aims at drawing attention to the identification of visceral Leishmaniasis infection i...

Studies with 26 clones of L. donovani promastigotes derived from three different Indian isolates indicated that wild type parasites are mixture of stibanate sensitive and resistant cells. Both forms of the parasite were resistant to the drug. Infection with resistant parasites appears to be the primary reason of high rate of pentavalent antimony unresponsiveness among Indian kala-azar patients....