Oral and Intragastric: New Routes of Infection by and ?

Although transmission in nature is associated with the bite of an infected sandfly vector, other possible transmission routes are speculated to occur, such as the oral route. We evaluated the possibility of infection by this route in golden hamsters () using (Lb) and (Li). Hamsters were exposed to experimental oral or intragastrical infection with axenic promastigotes, besides oral ingestion of a suspension of cultivated macrophages infected with amastigotes, lesion-fed skin lesion or infective spleen fragment.

Carajurin: a anthocyanidin from Arrabidaea chica as a potential biological marker of antileishmanial activity.

Leishmaniasis is a group of neglected tropical diseases whose treatment with antimonials bears limitations and has changed little in over 80 years. Medicinal plants have been evaluated as a therapeutic alternative for leishmaniasis. Arrabidaea chica is popularly used as a wound healing and antiparasitic agent, especially as leishmanicidal agent.

Leishmania amazonensis isolated from human visceral leishmaniasis: histopathological analysis and parasitological burden in different inbred mice.

Leishmania amazonensis is a major etiological agent of human cutaneous leishmaniasis in the Americas; nevertheless there are some reports of this species causing visceral disease in dogs and men. In the present work we have studied a Leishmania strain isolated from a human case of visceral leishmaniasis. We have infected different mouse strains and analyzed the development of the disease, studying the parasite's ability to visceralize and whether this ability is influenced by host genetics.

Oral Outbreak of Chagas Disease in Santa Catarina, Brazil: Experimental Evaluation of a Patient's Strain.

Chagas disease is a worldwide public health problem. Although the vectorial transmission of Chagas disease has been controlled in Brazil there are other ways of transmission, such as the ingestion of T. cruzi contaminated food, which ensures the continuation of this zoonosis.

The concurrent occurrence of Leishmania chagasi infection and childhood acute leukemia in Brazil.

Objective: This study investigated the co-existence of Leishmania chagasi infection and childhood leukemia in patients naïve to treatment; this has serious clinical and epidemiological implications.

Methods: The seroprevalence of L. chagasi antibodies prior to any treatment was investigated in children with clinical features of acute leukemia.

Actin-interacting and flagellar proteins in Leishmania spp.: Bioinformatics predictions to functional assignments in phagosome formation.

Several motile processes are responsible for the movement of proteins into and within the flagellar membrane, but little is known about the process by which specific proteins (either actin-associated or not) are targeted to protozoan flagellar membranes. Actin is a major cytoskeleton protein, while polymerization and depolymerization of parasite actin and actin-interacting proteins (AIPs) during both processes of motility and host cell entry might be key events for successful infection. For a better understanding the eukaryotic flagellar dynamics, we have surveyed genomes, transcriptomes and proteomes of pathogenic Leishmania spp.