Human immunodeficiency virus/Leishmania infantum in the first foci of urban American visceral leishmaniasis: clinical presentation from 1994 to 2010.

Introduction: Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) coinfection with Leishmania infantum or Leishmania donovani, the agents of visceral leishmaniasis (or kala-azar), has become a fatal public health problem in the tropics where kala-azar is endemic.

Methods: The clinical presentation of patients with HIV and L. infantum coinfection is described using two unique databases that together produce the largest case series of patients with kala-azar infected with HIV in South America.

Is severe visceral leishmaniasis a systemic inflammatory response syndrome? A case control study.

Introduction: The objective of the study is to identify the main risk factors for death by New World visceral leishmaniasis and establish a coherent pathogenic substrate of severe disease based on clinical findings.

Methods: Seventy-six deceased inpatients and 320 successfully treated inpatients with VL were studied in a case control study.

Results: Bacterial infection and bleeding were mutually exclusive events leading to death.