Search results for "Visceral Leishmaniasis"

EPIDEMIOLOGICAL SURVEILLANCE OF VISCERAL LEISHMANIASIS IN SICILY, ITALY

1997

Abstract Visceral leishmaniasis (VL) is endemic in Sicily. Although it is a notifiable disease, there is evidence that the actual number of cases is higher than that reported. In 1987, a regional reference center for active surveillance of VL was established and it recorded a total of 284 cases through 1995, a mean of 31.5 cases/year and about four-fold more than previously reported. Of the 284 cases, 150 (53%) were children (≤ 14 years of age), and of the 134 adults, 39 (29%) were coinfected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The commonest viscerotropic zymodeme of Leishmania infantum, MON 1, was identified in 40 (93%) of 43 HIV-negative and eight (57%) of 14 HIV-positive patients. A…

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

2012

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…

Five-year retrospective italian multicenter study of visceral leishmaniasis treatment.

2014

ABSTRACT The treatment of visceral leishmaniasis (VL) is poorly standardized in Italy in spite of the existing evidence. All consecutive patients with VL admitted at 15 Italian centers as inpatients or outpatients between January 2004 and December 2008 were retrospectively considered; outcome data at 1 year after treatment were obtained for all but 1 patient. Demographic characteristics, underlying diseases, diagnostic procedures, treatment regimens and outcomes, as well as side effects were recorded. A confirmed diagnosis of VL was reported for 166 patients: 120 (72.3%) immunocompetent, 21 (12.6%) patients with immune deficiencies other than HIV infection, and 25 (15.1%) coinfected with HI…

Focused ultrasound to diagnose HIV-associated tuberculosis (FASH) in the extremely resource-limited setting of South Sudan: a cross-sectional study

2019

ObjectiveOur cross-sectional study aimed at evaluating the diagnostic performance of Focused Assessment with Sonography for HIV-associated tuberculosis (FASH) to detect extrapulmonary tuberculosis in extremely resource-limited settings, with visceral leishmaniasis as a differential diagnosis with overlapping sonographic feature.DesignCross-sectional study.SettingVoluntary Counselling and Testing Centre (VCT) of Yirol Hospital, South Sudan.ParticipantsFrom May to November 2017, 252 HIV-positive patients out of 624 newly admitted to VCT Centre were registered for antiretroviral treatment. According to the number of trained doctors available to practise ultrasound (US) scan, a sample of 100 pa…

IL-15 in human visceral leishmaniasis caused byLeishmania infantum

2002

SummaryInterleukin (IL)-15 is a recently discovered cytokine with the ability to stimulate the proliferation activity of Th1 and/or Th2 lymphocytes. Here, we investigated the involvement of IL-15 in the immune response to Leishmania infantum infection by studying patients with visceral leishmaniasis (VL). We found that IL-15 is produced by leishmanial antigen (LAg)-stimulated peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) from active VL patients at a significantly higher level than those produced by cells from healed VL subjects or healthy controls. A significant increase in IL-15 serum blood levels was also observed in acute VL patients compared with healed ones. Furthermore, recombinant IL-15 …

Serological screening for Leishmania infantum in asymptomatic blood donors living in an endemic area (Sicily, Italy)

2005

The purpose of our study was to assess whether Leishmania infantum parasitemia occurs in asymptomatic Leishmania-seropositive subjects. Samples from 500 blood donors were tested using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Anti-Leishmania antibodies were not found in any sample. Our findings suggest that the risk of L. infantum transmission by blood transfusion in Sicily is very low.

Advances in leishmaniasis immunopathogenesis

2011

Decreased presence of Langerhans cells is a critical determinant for Indian Post kala-azar dermal leishmaniasis.

2015

Post kala-azar dermal leishmaniasis (PKDL) is the dermal sequel of visceral leishmaniasis (VL) and occurs after apparent cure or alongside with VL. It is confined to South Asia (India, Nepal and Bangladesh) and East Africa (mainly Sudan), the incidence being 5-10% and 50-60% respectively. In South Asia, as the transmission of VL is anthroponotic, PKDL patients are the proposed disease reservoir, thus assuming epidemiological significance, its eradication being linked to the control of leishmaniasis. In the absence of an animal model and its low incidence, factors contributing towards the immunopathogenesis of PKDL remain an open-ended, yet pertinent question. This study delineated the lesio…

Integration of animal health and public health surveillance sources to exhaustively inform the risk of zoonosis: An application to visceral leishmani…

2019

Abstract Visceral leishmaniasis (VL) is a parasitic disease that is endemic in more than 80 countries, and leads to high fatality rates when left untreated. We investigate the relationship of VL cases in dogs and human cases, specifically for evidence of VL in dogs leading to excess cases in humans. We use surveillance data for dogs and humans for the years 2007–2011 to conduct both spatial and spatio-temporal analyses. Several models are evaluated incorporating varying levels of dependency between dog and human data. Models including dog data show marginal improvement over models without; however, for a subset of spatial units with ample data, models provide concordant risk classification …

Hemophagocytic Lymphohistiocytosis in Early Infancy- Pitfall of Differentiation between Hereditary and Infectious Reasons

2018

Abstract Hemophagocytic Lymphohistiocytosis (HLH) is characterized by pathologic immune activation which occurs either as a familial disorder or as an acquired condition. The diagnosis of HLH requires the presence of five out of nine criteria: fever, splenomegaly, pancytopenia, hypertriglyceridemia, hypofibrinogenemia, hemophagocytosis in bone marrow, hyperferritinemia, low or absent natural killer cell activity and high level of soluble interleukin-2 receptor. Here we present a 6-month-old girl with parents from Southern Italy. She suffered from hepatosplenomegaly and a recurrent high fever for 3 months' duration. On admission, she showed neurological symptoms including irritability and ne…