Despite the Naegleria genus being isolated from different natural environments such as water, soil, and air, not all Naegleria species are capable of causing infections in humans, and they are capable of completing their life cycle in environmental niches. However, the presence of this genus may suggest the existence of one of the highly pathogenic free-living amoeba (FLA) species: Naegleria fowleri or the brain-eating amoeba. This facultative parasitic protozoon represents a risk to public health, mainly related to domestic and agricultural waters.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe current COVID-19 pandemic is causing profound health, economic, and social problems worldwide. The global shortage of medical and personal protective equipment (PPE) in specialized centers during the outbreak demonstrated the need for efficient methods to disinfect and recycle them in times of emergency. We have previously described that high ozone concentrations destroyed viral RNA in an inactivated SARS-CoV-2 strain within a few minutes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: SARS-CoV-2 stability and infection persistence has been studied on different surfaces, but scarce data exist related to personal protective equipment (PPE), moreover using realist viral loads for infection. Due to the importance for adequate PPE management to avoid risk of virus infection, RNA stability was evaluated on PPE.
Methods: Persistence of SARS-CoV-2 infection and detection of genomic RNA in PPE (gowns and face masks) were determined by in-vitro assays and RT-qPCR, respectively.
Leishmaniasis represents a serious threat to the health as one of the most important neglected tropical diseases as designated by the World Health Organization. The disease is endemic in 82 countries, among them Tunisia is an indigenous area for cutaneous Leishmaniasis. In a previous work, two tritepenic acids namely oleanolic and maslinic acids have been isolated from olive leaf extract.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe natural infection of Lutzomyia neivai with Leishmania in the endemic area of American cutaneous leishmaniasis (ACL) in northwestern Argentina was analyzed by the polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-hybridization technique. Phlebotominae sand flies were captured in the provinces of Tucumán and Salta between 1999 and 2003. From a sample of 440 Lu.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAmerican cutaneous leishmaniasis (ACL) is an endemic disease in Northern Argentina. We applied the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) followed by a hybridization labelled probe to 21 paraffin embedded human skin biopsies, already analyzed histologically, from leishmaniasis endemic areas in the province of Tucumán, Argentina. We used primers previously designed to detect a Leishmania-specific 120-base-pair fragment of kinetoplast DNA minicircle, other two primer pairs that amplify kDNA minicircles belonging to the L.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe humoral immune response against Leishmania braziliensis histone H1 by patients with cutaneous leishmaniasis is described. For this purpose, the protein was purified as a recombinant protein in a prokaryotic expression system and was assayed by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) with a collection of sera from patients with cutaneous leishmaniasis and Chagas' disease. The assays showed that L.
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