High levels of antileishmanial immunoglobulin E (IgE) antibodies are associated with disease activity in visceral leishmaniasis. Herein, we report our observations about the relationship between antileishmanial IgE antibodies and clinical aspects of cutaneous leishmaniasis. This study was carried out with 45 patients (29 male and 16 female), with ages ranging from 11 to 48 years. All subjects w...

Antileishmanial chemotherapy is hampered by the location of the parasite within the phagolysosome of the macrophage, which restricts the bioavailability of many potentially useful antileishmanial drugs. In this study, the possibility of using antileishmanial drugs targeted to the infected macrophages by means of a chemical linkage to a neutral mannose-substituted poly-L-lysine carrier molecule ...

The benzimidazole compound omeprazole, used widely for the treatment of peptic ulcer disease, inhibits the growth of Leishmania donovani, the causative agent of visceral leishmaniasis. Promastigotes cultured at acidic pH and amastigotes within infected macrophages are reduced 90% or more with 150 microM omeprazole. Antiparasitic action of the drug is due to its inhibition of the P-type K(+),H(+...

Currently available primary screens for the selection of candidate antileishmanial compounds are not ideal. These techniques are time-consuming, laborious, and difficult to scale and require macrophages, which limit their use for high-throughput screening. We have developed Leishmania donovani field isolates that constitutively express the firefly luciferase reporter gene (luc) as a part of an ...

In visceral leishmaniasis (VL), development of alternative safe therapeutic strategy is gaining paramount wherein natural components of plant origin have prominence. We explored Coccinia grandis (L.) Voigt, a medicinal plant known in traditional folk medicine, for its antileishmanial efficacy. SDS-PAGE analysis of the C. grandis leaf extract (Cg-Ex) showed few protein bands about 14-66 kDa amon...

BACKGROUND Sensitive and glucantime (MA) resistance Leishmania tropica are referred to those isolates, which are responsive, or non-responsive to one or two full courses of treatment by MA systematically and/or intra-lesionally, respectively. In this study, we evaluated the antileishmanial activity of biogenic selenium nanoparticles (Se NPs) alone and in combination with MA against sensitive an...

In countries where leishmaniasis is endemic, there are not very many treatment alternatives and most options have problems associated with their use. Plants and their natural products constitute good sources of interesting lead compounds that could be potentially active against Leishmania. Chenopodium ambrosioides is a plant that is widely used in popular medicine and its antiparasitic effects ...