objective(s)cutaneous leishmaniasis is a common parasitic disease which is endemic in some parts of the world. in vitro and in vivo studies have shown azithromycin efficacy on some leishmania species. because of structural similarity between clarithromycin and azithromycin and efficacy of clarithromycin against intracellular organisms and due to the absence of previous studies in this respect, ...

objective(s) annual incidence of cutaneous leishmaniasis is increasingly growing and development of the alternative drugs against it is a major concern. artemisia genus is a traditional medicinal plant in iran. the aim of this study was to examine the leishmanicidal activity of various iranian artemisia species extracts. materials and methods different extracts were gathered from eleven iranian...

BACKGROUND Leishmaniasis is a parasitic disease associated with extensive mortality and morbidity. The treatment for leishmaniasis is currently based on pentavalent antimonials and amphotericin B; however, these drugs result in numerous adverse side effects. Natural compounds have been used as novel treatments for parasitic diseases. In this paper, we evaluated the effect of (-)-epigallocatechi...

Visceral leishmaniasis is caused by the dimorphic protozoan Leishmania donovani, which exists as an aflagellar amastigote within mammalian mononuclear phagocytes and as a flagellated extracellular promastigote in its sandfly vector. We have identified four plant lectins that bind to the L. donovani surface, and through these we have documented stage-specific differences in exposed surface carbo...

The life stages of Leishmania spp. include the infectious promastigote and the replicative intracellular amastigote. Each stage is phagocytosed by macrophages during the parasite life cycle. We previously showed that caveolae, a subset of cholesterol-rich membrane lipid rafts, facilitate uptake and intracellular survival of virulent promastigotes by macrophages, at least in part, by delaying pa...

A sensitive microcapillary culture method (MCM) was developed for rapid diagnosis of cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL). The MCM is superior to the traditional culture method (TCM) as determined by the smaller inoculum size, the higher sensitivity for detection of promastigotes, and the more rapid time for emergence of promastigotes. With lesion amastigote loads from grade III to 0, the positive rate...

During its life cycle, the parasitic protozoon Leishmania mexicana differentiates from a flagellated form, the promastigote, to an amastigote form carrying a rudimentary flagellum. Besides biochemical changes, this process involves a change in overall cell morphology including flagellar shortening. A mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase homologue designated LmxMKK was identified in a homolog...

BACKGROUND Cutaneous leishmaniasis due to Leishmania major has become a hot topic in Iran. The objective of this study was to determine some ecological aspects of sand flies in the study area. METHODS Sand flies were collected biweekly from indoors and outdoors fixed places in the selected villages, using 30 sticky paper traps from the beginning to the end of the active season of 2006 in Kerm...