Comparison of Resistance of Wild İsolates, Which are Resistant to Pentavalent Antimonial Compounds, Against Drugs Used in the Treatment of Leishmaniasis.

Objective: Meglumine antimoniate (Glucantime) and Sodium stibogluconate (Pentostam) are used for the treatment of cutaneous leismaniasis in Turkey. There is a reported resistance to these drugs in recent years. The aim of the present study was to compare the sensitivities of resistant isolates against Amphotericin B, Miltefosine, Meglumine Antimoniate, Paromomycin and Sodium Stibogluconate.

Methods: Five isolates of patients with cutaneous leishmaniasis, who showed no clinical recovery despite two consecutive meglumine antimoniate treatments, which were stored in the Parasite Bank in Manisa Celal Bayar University Medical Faculty were selected. They were genotyped with Real-Time PCR using specific primers and probes to ITS1 region. Drug resistance levels of each isolate were analysed for Amphotericin B, Miltefosine, Meglumine Antimoniate, Paromomycin, and Sodium Stibogluconate at concentrations of 500, 250, 125, 50, 25 μg/mL with XTT method and hemocytometer.

Results: It was observed that the resistant isolates showed no resistance to Amphotericin B, and were sensitive to Miltefosine, Sodium Stibogluconate, Paromomycin and Meglumin Antimonate, respectively. In addition, (MHOM/AZ/1974/SAF-K27) isolate of the control group could stay viable in none of the drug concentrations of five agents in the study.

Conclusion: It was determined that none of the selected resistant isolates showed resistance to Amphotericin B and that was also shown statistically (p<0.05). The results of this study are important in guiding clinicians and researchers who conduct studies on drugs and search for new drug molecules.