Leishmania Donovani Persistence and Circulation Causing Cutaneous Leishmaniasis in Unusual-foci of Nepal

Overview

Journal Sci Rep

Specialty Science

Date 2023 Jul 29

PMID 37516780

Authors

Tinmaya Rai

Srijan Shrestha

Sabita Prajapati

Anup Bastola

Niraj Parajuli

Pragya Gautam Ghimire

Parmananda Bhandari

Kishor Pandey

Manju Jain

Greg Matlashewski

Rachel Bras-Goncalves

Krishna Das Manandhar

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Cutaneous leishmaniasis cases have increased dramatically in recent years in Nepal. The study offers molecular identification of the Leishmania species using 40 patient's aspiration biopsy samples, targeting markers kinetoplast minicircle DNA (kDNA) and internal transcribed spacer-1 (ITS1). Among molecularly diagnosed 22 cutaneous leishmaniasis cases, L. donovani complex was identified in 13 instances and L. major in 9 cases. The ITS1 PCR was positive in 12 of the positive nested- kDNA PCR cases (12/22), confirming L. donovani complex in seven of the cases and L. major in five of the cases. In addition, the study conclude that concurrent occurrence of atypical cutaneous infections caused by L. donovani parasite in 59.1% of cases and typical cutaneous infections caused by L. major parasite in 40.9% of cases. A Phylogentic analaysis showed that the detected L. donovani species present null genetic distances from seven references of L. donovani, but slight differences between ITS1 sequences and not grouped into a significant monophyletic cluster.

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