BACKGROUND Phlebotomine sand flies are known to transmit Leishmania parasites, bacteria and viruses that affect humans and animals in many countries worldwide. Precise sand fly identification is essential to prevent phlebotomine-borne diseases. Over the past two decades, progress in matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) has emerged as an acc...

Since 1996, the number of cases of cutaneous leishmaniasis has increased dramatically in Ouagadougou. Leishmania major, zymodeme MON74 was the only strain isolated in this focus. An epidemiological study of the phlebotomine sandflies fauna has been undertaken. Collections of sandflies have been carried out in six areas of the town during one year with two intensive collections at the end of the...

During September 2010, 133 female sand flies were caught inside houses of patients with cutaneous leishmaniasis in the focus for this disease in southeastern Tunisia and subsequently dissected. One specimen was positive for Leishmania protozoa. This sand fly species was identified as Phlebotomus sergenti, and the parasite was identified as L. tropica. This is the first report of P. sergenti inv...

BACKGROUND Leishmania major is an Old World species causing cutaneous leishmaniasis and is transmitted by Phlebotomus papatasi and Phlebotomus duboscqi. In Brazil, two isolates from patients who never left the country were characterised as L. major-like (BH49 and BH121). Using molecular techniques, these isolates were indistinguishable from the L. major reference strain (FV1). OBJECTIVES We eva...

zoonotic cutaneous leishmaniosis is endemic in chabahar area, south east of iran. in order to determine the natural leptomonad infection of phlebotomine sandflies caught from rodent burrows, an investigation was carried out in three foci of this area during june to october 1997. sandflies were collected by sticky traps, placed at the openings of meriones hurrianae and tatera indica burrows. tot...

BACKGROUND Leishmaniasis is an important public health disease in many developing countries as well in Iran. The main objective of this study was to investigate on leishmania infection of wild caught sand flies in an endemic focus of disease in Esfarayen district, north east of Iran. METHODS Sand flies were collected by sticky papers and mounted in a drop of Puri's medium for species identifi...

The evolutionary relationships of sand flies and Leishmania are discussed in this report, which draws distinctions between co-association, co-evolution and co-speciation (or co-cladogenesis). Examples focus on Phlebotomus vectors of Le. infantum and Le. major in the Mediterranean subregion.

Visceral Leishmaniasis (VL) is a major health problem in Bihar, India. The disease is caused by a protozoan parasite Leishmania donovani and transmitted by the established vector Phlebotomus argentipes (Diptera: Psychodidae) in India. P. argentipes transmits viral and bacterial pathogens. Nematodes were isolated from the body of P. argentpes for the first time in India. Its role as pathogen is ...

Phlebotomus duboscqi is the principle vector of Leishmania major, the causative agent of cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL), in West Africa and is the suspected vector in Mali. Although found throughout the country the seasonality and infection prevalence of P. duboscqi has not been established in Mali. We conducted a three year study in two neighboring villages, Kemena and Sougoula, in Central Mali,...