BACKGROUND Known as 'neglected disease' because relatively little effort has been applied to finding cures, leishmaniasis kills more than 150,000 people every year and debilitates millions more. Visceral leishmaniasis (VL), also called Kala Azar (KA) or black fever in India, claims around 20,000 lives every year. Whole genome analysis presents an excellent means to identify new targets for drug...

Case report of a patient with rheumatoid arthritis who developed severe neutropenia, splenomegaly and was diagnosed with Felty's syndrome. The patient later developed Kala-azar. Both diseases have similar clinical and laboratory presentation, making the differential diagnosis difficult. The present case report aims at drawing attention to the identification of visceral Leishmaniasis infection i...

Pathogenesis in kala-azar is associated with depressed cellular immunity and significant elevation of antileishmanial antibodies. Since these antibodies are present even after cure, analysis of the parasite-specific isotypes and immunoglobulin G (IgG) subclasses in kala-azar patients may shed new light on the immune responses during progression and resolution of infection. Using leishmanial mem...

produced in man by inoculation of cultures of Leishmania tropica. Cutaneous inoculation of Leishmania donovani from spleen puncture material from a case of kala-azar, however, is reported to have ' apparently produced kala-azar in a man' but on two occasions accidental inoculation of spleen puncture material from cases of kala-azar was without any effect (Napier, 1927). Recently, Terry et al. (...

‘‘She begged pardon from us, from her child, from Allah...while she was getting down from the bed she closed her eyes, and started moaning. When we held her and made her sit on the bed, she said...Mother, I am dying, I am dying. She collapsed on my lap. We splashed water on her face. We said Doa Durud [religious verse]...then phoned my son.’’ This is how the mother-in-law of the deceased woman ...

Kala-azar is a chronic infection of reticuloendothelial system caused by flagellated protozoan, leishmania donovani injected into human host by the bite of the sand fly (phlebotomous) previously infected by biting and sucking the blood of a patient of leishmaniasis. It is characterized by irregular fever of long duration, large spleen and liver, anaemia, leucopenia and progressive emaciation. T...

couraging results, it was decided to a further extensive trial with this drug in certain hyperendemic kala-azar areas in the tea districts of Mangaldai, as an anti-kala-azar drug of such promising quality was indispensable, especially when, due to present war-time conditions, other pentavalent antimony compounds of proved value, e.g. solustibosan, neostibosan, etc., suitable for mass administra...

Studies with 26 clones of L. donovani promastigotes derived from three different Indian isolates indicated that wild type parasites are mixture of stibanate sensitive and resistant cells. Both forms of the parasite were resistant to the drug. Infection with resistant parasites appears to be the primary reason of high rate of pentavalent antimony unresponsiveness among Indian kala-azar patients....