Significance of persistence of antibodies against Leishmania infantum in Sicilian patients affected by acute visceral leishmaniasis.

The background of this article is as follows: Few data are available about the persistence of serum-specific IgG antibodies to L. infantum after acute VL. The objective of this article is to evaluate the persistence of antibodies against L. infantum in patients healed from acute VL, and the kinetic of the same antibodies observed in 2 cases of VL relapse and 2 cases of resistance to therapy. The methods which we used to obtain our objective are the following: 55 apparently immunocompetent, HIV-negative patients were examined for antibodies to L. infantum by IFAT over 14 years period, and we got the following results: Serum-specific IgG antibodies titers decrease slowly, but constantly. In t…