In 1950s the Government of India under National Malaria Eradication Programme (NMEP) now National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme, launched massive insecticidal spraying with DDT for malaria vector control and kala-azar came to a halt in Assam as a collateral benefit of malaria eradication programme. As a result, there were no further reports of kala-azar from the northeastern region exc...

Sir, Kala-azar, transmitted by sandflies was endemic in Assam until 1950, with three major epidemics between 1875 and 19501,2. Intensive insecticide spraying as part of National Malaria Eradication Programme eliminated the disease from Assam by mid 1950s, except for isolated case reports upto 19853. We recently diagnosed kalaazar in an adult male aged 43 years from Guwahati city, Assam, who was...

OBJECTIVES Recent clinical data suggest that severe kala-azar (or visceral leishmaniasis) is an exaggerated innate immune response mediated by inflammatory cytokines, leading to a systemic inflammatory syndrome similar to what is observed in malaria, sepsis and other diseases. We tested this hypothesis by measuring serum cytokines in individuals with kala-azar. METHODS We compared patients wi...

INTRODUCTION The treatment of Indian tropical disease such as kala-azar is likely to be troublesome to the clinicians as AmpB- and miltefosine-resistant Leishmania donovani has been reported. The rationale behind designed a novel inhibitors of model of L. donovani enolase and performing a binding study with its inhibitors to gain details of the interaction between protein residues and ligand mo...

The Fucose-Mannose Ligand (FML) of Leishmania donovani is a complex glycoproteic fraction. Its potential use as a tool for diagnosis of human visceral leishmaniasis was tested with human sera from Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. The FML-ELISA test, showed 100% sensitivity and 96% specificity, identifying patients with overt kala-azar (p < 0.001, when compared to normal sera), and subjects w...