BACKGROUND Visceral leishmaniasis is systematic serous parasitic disease with public health importance. Zoonotic form of visceral leishmaniasis is wide spread in Mediterranean basin and South America regions. Direct agglutination test (DAT) is an accurate, reliable and non-expensive serological test for the diagnosis of visceral leishmaniasis in human and canines but the antigen preparation inv...

Three years after the first report of Lutzomyia longipalpis in Clorinda, Argentina, a border city near Asunción, Paraguay, the city was surveyed again. Lu. longipalpis was found clustered in the same neighbourhoods in 2007 as in 2004, even though the scattered distribution of canine visceral leishmaniasis was more related to the traffic of dogs through the border.

Visceral leishmaniasis (VL) is an important zoonosis caused by Leishmania infantum, which has in the domestic dog its principal vertebrate host in urban environments. VL is usually transmitted by phlebotomine sand flies, however atypical routes of transmission have been described. In this review we discuss the role of sexual and vertical transmissions, and their implications in the maintenance ...

INTRODUCTION In Brazil, visceral leishmaniasis (VL) has spread to various regions. This study reports canine cases of VL in Barra Mansa, where human VL cases were recently reported. METHODS Using the human index case, a canine survey was performed by dual-path platform immunochromatography and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Seropositive animals were euthanized. Cultures were collected to ...

To elucidate the local tissue cytokine response of dogs infected with Leishmania chagasi, cytokine mRNA levels were measured in bone marrow aspirates from 27 naturally infected dogs from Brazil and were compared with those from 5 uninfected control animals. Interferon-gamma mRNA accumulation was enhanced in infected dogs and was positively correlated with humoral (IgG1) but not with lymphoproli...

Forty-one naturally infected dogs with visceral leishmaniasis from an urban area of Corumbá (Mato Grosso do Sul-BRAZIL) were studied and three types of lung involvement due to visceral leishmaniasis were characterized; a cellular, a cellular-fibrotic and a fibrotic type. These types seem to represent a sequential evolutive proce'as. Visceral leishmaniasis frequently causes an interstitial pneu ...

Current strategies for the control of zoonotic visceral leishmaniasis (VL) rely on its efficient diagnosis in both human and canine hosts. The most promising and cost effective approach is based on serologic assays with recombinant proteins. However, no single antigen has been found so far which can be effectively used to detect the disease in both dogs and humans. In previous works, we identif...

Dogs are the main reservoir host for zoonotic visceral leishmaniasis caused by Leishmania infantum. In this study we investigated the immune response in spleens of L. infantum-infected dogs by measuring the mRNA expression levels for a wide panel of cytokines, transcription factors and chemokines. mRNA levels and parasite load were followed during 7 months of experimental infection and 14 month...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Human visceral leishmaniasis is endemic in Natal, northeast of Brazil, where the domestic dog is an important parasite reservoir in the infectious cycle of Leishmania spp. In this study, was evaluated the antileishmanial IgG antibody and epidemiological factors related to canine visceral leishmaniasis (CVL). METHODS Sera samples obtained by venipuncture of 1,426 dogs ...