Zoonotic visceral leishmaniasis is caused by the protozoan Leishmania infantum and little is known about the occurrence and pathogenesis of this parasite in the CNS. The aims of this study were to evaluate the occurrence, viability and load of L. infantum in the CNS, and to identify the neurological histological alterations associated with this protozoan and its co-infections in naturally infec...

Background: Heat shock protein 70 (HSP70) is present in all organisms studied so far, and is a major immunogen in infections caused by pathogens including Leishmania spp. Objective: The aim of this study was to clone and express HSP70 from L. infantum strain MCAN/IR/96/LON-49 and evaluate antibody response against HSP70 in visceral leishmaniasis (VL). Methods: The L. infantum HSP70 gene segment...

The electrophoretic pattern of cysteine proteinases in axenically grown myxamoebae of Dictyostelium discoideum can be altered by the addition of either Gram-negative (Klebsiella aerogenes, Escherichia coli) or Gram-positive (Micrococcus lysodeikticus, Bacillus subtilis) bacteria to the culture. No changes occurred, however, if either yeast or latex beads were used in place of bacteria. The chan...

Clinically infected dogs have been identified as the main reservoir hosts of visceral leishmaniasis (VL)caused by Leishmania infantum. Recently asymptomatic infected dogs were regarded to be as important asclinically ill dogs. This study was aimed to determine the seroprevalence of L. infantum infection amongasymptomatic dogs in the southwest and central parts of Iran and to investigate possibl...

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES Kala-azar is the visceral and most severe form of leishmaniasis that leads to death if untreated. The causative agents of visceral leishmaniasis (VL) are members of Leishmania (L.) donovani complex which includes L. chagasi and L. infantum. Genome sequences have raised the question whether L. chagasi and L. infantum are synonymous or different. This question has importan...

A cystatin alpha-sensitive cysteine proteinase that plays an important role in the lysosomal inactivation and degradation of L-lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) was purified by column chromatography from an ammonium sulfate precipitate of lysosome extract prepared from rat livers. It was eluted with marked delay from cathepsins B and H in a Sephacryl S-200 column by its specific interaction with the ...

NADH could not be freeze-stored at -25°C in 50 mMsodium phosphate buffer (pH range 6-8 20°C) without serious loss of the nucleotide; however, no losses were seen upon freeze storage in 50 mM-Hepes buffer (pH range 7-8, 20°C). The rate of NADH degradation was greater (approx. 2-fold) in 50 mMthan in 5 mM-sodium phosphate buffer, although NADH values at both buffer concentrations were similar (5%...