Streptococcus pneumoniae infection leads to multifold increases in sialyltransferase, galactosyltransferase, alpha 2-fucosyltransferase, and alpha 3-fucosyltransferase activity of rat liver. Such changes may reflect an increased demand for glycosylation of acute-phase proteins synthesized and secreted by the liver during inflammatory processes. Serum sialyltransferase became elevated in bacteri...

Background In East Africa, visceral leishmaniasis (VL) is endemic in parts of Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya and Uganda. It is caused by Leishmania donovani and transmitted by the sandfly vector Phlebotomus martini. In the Pokot focus, reaching from western Kenya into eastern Uganda, formulation of a prevention strategy has been hindered by the lack of knowledge on VL risk factors as well as b...

Insect galectins are associated with embryonic development or immunity against pathogens. Here, we show that they can be exploited by parasites for survival in their insect hosts. PpGalec, a tandem repeat galectin expressed in the midgut of the sandfly Phlebotomus papatasi, is used by Leishmania major as a receptor for mediating specific binding to the insect midgut, an event crucial for parasi...

background: algeria is among the most affected mediterranean countries by leishmaniasis due to its large geo­graphic extent and climatic diversity. the current study aimed to determine the ecological status (composition and diversity) of phlebotomine sandfly populations in the region of oum el bouaghi (northeast algeria). methods: an entomological survey was conducted during the period may–octo...

A simple method is described for treating 250-ml glass Wheaton bottles with insecticide, and using them as test chambers for detecting insecticide resistance in mosquito and sandfly populations. The methods for treating bottles, obtaining baseline data, and applying this technique to insects from the field are described. Sample data are presented from tests run on different vector species using...

Toscana virus (TOSV) represents a frequent cause of viral meningitis in the Mediterranean Basin that remains neglected in neighbouring countries. We report a documented TOSV meningitis case in a traveller returning from Tuscany to Switzerland. While routine serological and PCR assays could not discriminate between TOSV and Sandfly fever Naples virus infection, a high-throughput sequencing perfo...

Leishmania species can cause a wide spectrum of cutaneous disease in HIV-positive patients: asymptomatic, localized cutaneous, mucosal, muco-cutaneous, diffuse cutaneous or post-kala-azar leishmaniasis. In such cases, which are usually severely immunocompromised, the leishmanial parasites reach the skin of the human host by dissemination after either a new infection (resulting from the bite of ...

An important aspect of tropical medicine is analysis of geographic aspects of risk of disease transmission, which for lack of detailed public health data must often be reduced to an understanding of the distributions of critical species such as vectors and reservoirs. We examine the applicability of a new technique, ecological niche modeling, to the challenge of understanding distributions of s...