OBJECTIVES To assess the effect of monoclonal antibodies (MABS) raised against L. major derived LPG on L. major development in vitro and in its natural vector P. duboscqi. Also determine whether LPG molecule and the sand fly the gut lysates have shared epitopes. DESIGN A laboratory based study. SETTING Colony bred P. duboscqi sand flies and all other experiments were done under laboratory c...

The effect of blood meals from humans and seven domestic, wild, or laboratory animals (dogs, horses, chickens, rats, opossums, mice, and hamsters) on the development of Leishmania braziliensis and L. amazonensis was studied in the sand fly Lutzomyia migonei. The development of L. braziliensis and L. amazonensis exhibited peripylarian and suprapylarian patterns of development, respectively, in t...

Visceral leishmaniasis (VL) is a serious tropical disease that affects approximately 500 thousand people worldwide every year. In the Americas, VL is caused by the parasite Leishmania (Leishmania) infantum chagasi mainly transmitted by the bite of the sand fly vector Lutzomyia longipalpis. Despite recent advances in the study of interaction between Leishmania and sand flies, very little is know...

Centers For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) light traps were modified for use with light-emitting diodes (LED) and compared against a control trap (incandescent light) to determine the effectiveness of blue, green, and red lights against standard incandescent light routinely used for sand fly surveillance. Light traps were baited with dry ice and rotated through a 4 x 4 Latin square design...

Current control methodologies have not prevented the spread of visceral leishmaniasis (VL) across Brazil. Here, we describe the development of a new tool for controlling the sand fly vector of the disease: a long-lasting lure, which releases a synthetic male sex pheromone, attractive to both sexes of Lutzomyia longipalpis. This device could be used to improve the effectiveness of residual insec...

Neural networks have recently been widely used to model some of the human activities in many areas of civil engineering applications. In the present paper, artificial neural networks (ANN) for predicting compressive strength of cubes and durability of concrete containing metakaolin with fly ash and silica fume with fly ash are developed at the age of 3, 7, 28, 56 and 90 days. For building these...

In Brazil, control of the vector Lutzomyia longipalpis is one of the main strategies used to limit the expansion of American visceral leishmaniasis. However, studies on the ecology of this sand fly are rare, especially regarding its natural infection with species of Leishmania. A study of the natural infection of Lu. longipalpis by Leishmania sp. was carried out in the Bela Vista neighborhood i...

Lutzomyia naftalekatzi, a new phlebotomine sand fly belonging to the L. aragaoi species group, is described from specimens collected in Zona da Mata region of Pernambuco, Brazil.

The brain cell karyotype of New World sand fly Lutzomyia shannoni was described. This species has four pairs of chromosomes, 2N=8, with one pair of heteromorphic chromosomes.

We describe a technique to separate male and female pupae of sand flies. This has reduced the labour to separate flies after emergence and also allows the isolation of unmated adults for behavioural and physiological studies.