The current interest in leishmaniasis stems from the importance of this disease with respect to travel medicine, veterans of Operation Desert Storm, humanitarian concerns, and infection with human immunodeficiency virus. Herein, I review aspects of leishmaniasis that are of practical value to practitioners, including presentation, diagnosis, and chemotherapy; I will emphasize advances in chemot...

This report presents evidence for the interactions of several classes of cationic amphiphilic drugs including the phenothiazines, aminoquinolines, biguanides, and aromatic diamidines, with lipid A, the endotoxic principle of lipopolysaccharides. The interactions of the drugs were quantitatively assessed by fluorescence methods. The affinities of the drugs for lipid A parallel their endotoxin-an...

In this study the anti-proliferative effect of curcumin (curcuma longa) that is the active ingredient of ground dried rhizome has been studied against three local and three reference leishmanial strains, Leishmania major, Leishmania tropica and Leishmania infantum (Pakistani isolate). Curcumin has shown an average IC50 of 5.3 microM against promastigotes of various leishmanial strains which is ...

The authors report a case of a male patient from Bacabal, MA with diffuse cutaneous leishmaniasis (DCL), for at least nine years, with 168 lesions on his body. These were tumour-like nodules with some ulceration. He used pentavalent antimonial (glucantime) and an association of gamma interferon plus glucantime with improvement of the lesions but relapsed later. Recently, pentamidine isethionate...

Twenty analogues of pentamidine, 7 primary metabolites of pentamidine, and 30 dicationic substituted bis-benzimidazoles were screened for their inhibitory and fungicidal activities against Candida albicans and Cryptococcus neoformans. A majority of the compounds had MICs at which 80% of the strains were inhibited (MIC80s) comparable to those of amphotericin B and fluconazole. Unlike fluconazole...

Trypanosomes from animals are potential pathogens for humans. Several human cases infected by Trypanosoma lewisi, a parasite of rats, have been reported. The number of these infections is possibly underestimated. Some infections were self-cured, others required treatment with drugs used in human African trypanosomosis. An in vitro evaluation of these drugs and fexinidazole, a new oral drug cand...