Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0024530 (malaria)
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Of the diseases caused by protozoal parasites, leishmaniasis is probably second in importance only to malaria. Chemotherapeutic drugs are toxic, expensive and not 100% effective. This, and the absence of any non-living vaccine against the disease, means that control depends on eliminating either reservoirs or insect vectors, or both. Recently, a greatly increased knowledge of the Leishmania species involved, and of their natural hosts, has helped to define the nature and extent of the problem.
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PMID:Epidemiology and ecology of leishmaniasis in Latin-America. 35 9

Although several good antiparasitic agents are available, new drugs are needed for the treatment of diseases such as chloroquine-resistant malaria, Chagas' disease, leishmaniasis and filariasis. The 'semirational approach' should be the basis for their synthesis.
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PMID:Chemotherapy of parasite infections. 35 13

ELISA AND IFAT have been applied to the sero-diagnosis of cutaneous and visceral leishmaniasis and the levels of leishmanial antibody detected by Leishmania donovani antigens in both tests have been compared. From the results it appears that ELISA is a little more sensitive than IFAT, but IFAT seems to be more specific in detecting leishmanial antibodies. In both tests reactions between leishmanial antigen and some other infections, such as malaria and typhoid, were observed. These non-specific reactions reduce the validity of both tests, especially ELISA, in the sero-diagnosis of cutaneous leishmaniasis but, in visceral leishmaniasis, the leishmanial antibody levels were high enough to be unaffected by non-specific reactions. In general, ELISA is as good as IFAT and more practical in the sero-diagnosis and mass screening surveys for kala-azar.
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PMID:A comparison of enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and indirect fluorescent antibody test in the sero-diagnosis of cutaneous and visceral leishmaniasis in Iran. 38 70

The Leishmanin skin test was performed on 1353 people in a kala-azar endemic region of south-west Ethiopia. Physical examinations were also carried out on 2723. Two of these individuals, both males, had active visceral leishmaniasis with Leishmania organisms demonstrated by spleen puncture. Two other males, including one member of the research team, had parasitologically proven cutaneous leishmaniasis. Because there was negligible migration and little movement of individuals outside of their tribal territories, the geographical distribution of skin test positivity and clinical findings could be determined and correlated with environmental parameters. The level of positive skin tests for the groups tested ranged from over 64% for the three tribes collectively inhabiting the lower regions of the Omo Valley (altitude approx. 500 m) to 6.4% for the Suri tribe, which lives at 1400 m. Skin test positivity was highest in areas of deeply fissuring montmorillonite soils and where Phlebotomus langeroni orientalis have been collected. Termite mounds of the pipe-organ type seemed to occur independently of the proportion of positive skin tests, possibly because alternative resting and breeding sites for sandflies were available in the cotton clay soil or because of the cultural patterns of the people. Almost always, males had a markedly higher prevalence of positive skin tests than did females. The degree of positivity was strongly correlated with increasing age, most positive conversions occurring in the ten to 20 year olds, the age at which males join cattle camps as part of their herding activities. Splenomegaly reached a prevalence of nearly 50% among the Hamar speaking people to the east of the Omo River, where the pattern of disease suggests malaria as the principal cause. Hepatomegaly, however, was highest in the lower Omo Basin among the Nyangatom, Dassanetch and Kerre, where hydatid disease was a major cause of liver enlargement, but seemed unrelated to the proportion of positive Leishmanin skin tests.
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PMID:Kala-azar in Ethiopia: survey of south-west Ethiopia. The Leishmanin skin test and epidemiological studies. 53 46

Community participation was found to be an important resource for ascertaining and achieving the project health goals of a multiprofessional health team in Porto Nacional, an Amazon community in Brazil's interior. The project was established in 1968 to provide comprehensive, integrated medical care. The health team consisted of 6 physicians (1 sanitarian, 2 surgeons, 2 internists, and 1 pediatrician), 2 social workers, 1 nurse, and 1 educator. The team assumed operating responsibility for the area's health unit and 50 bed hospital, and worked closely with other local health agencies and providers. To attract financial and technical resources, the team founded a non-profit agency, COMSAUDE, to promote health and educational activities. The area's health problems consisted of a predominance of waterborne and foodborne diseases, an infant mortality rate of approximately 70 deaths/1000 live births, high malaria morbidity, tuberculosis, leprosy, cutaneous leishmaniasis, a moderate incidence of Chagas' disease, and extensive infestation of vermin. The local health unit was well-known and accepted in the community which facilitated the team's activities. At the time of the team's arrival, the vermin problem was causing public concern. Work on controlling this problem appeared an appropriate vehicle to achieve the dual objectives of promoting sanitation activities and becoming familiar with and accepted by the community. A combination of home visits and general meetings with institutional and local leaders mobilized a significant segment of the population. Increased cesspool construction resulted. Among the poorest neighborhoods, residents developed an organization to finance the cost of construction materials. Technical assistance from sanitation aides was provided to rural communities. Municipal health boards were organized to assure maximum utilization of visiting physicians, to conduct health surveys, and to oversee the implementation of recommended preventive health measures. A health board of volunteers was initiated in Porto Nacional to identify health related problems and propose solutions within the scope of the local government. The board was responsible for improvements in sanitation at the market place and the organization of trash collection. Health surveys were conducted utilizing students from local schools as interviewers. The surveys increased community awareness of health problems in addition to providing health data. A center for malnourished children was established which served as a recuperation facility for the children and a nutrition and hygiene education center for mothers. A cooperative housing improvement program was initiated. Residents worked Saturdays gathering construction materials and working on neighbors' houses. The sanitation aides assisted in drawing plans and selecting building, cesspool, and well sites. The team participated in educational activities at the schools, including a controversial sex education/marriage preparation course that was ultimately limited to prospective newlyweds. Based on 8 years of program operation, the authors conclude that community participation is an important development resource and that the process of working together is as important as the results achieved.
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PMID:Community participation in health activities in an Amazon community of Brazil. 69 59

Various workers, including T. D. Stewart, claim that the aboriginal Americas were relatively disease-free because of the bering Strait cold-screen, eliminating many pathogens, and the paucity of zoonotic infections because of few domestic animals. Evidence of varying validity suggests that precontact Americns had their own strains of treponemic infections, bacillary and amoebic dysenteries, influenza and viral penumonia and other respiratory diseases, salmonellosis and perhaps other food poisoning, various arthritides, some endoparasites such as the ascarids, and several geographically circumscribed diseases such as the rickettsial verruca (Carrion's disease) and New World leishmaniasis and trypanosomiasis. Questionably aboriginal are tuberculosis and typhus. Accordingly, virtually all the "crowd-type" ecopathogenic diseases such as smallpox, yellow fever, typhoid, malaria, measles, pertussis, polio, etc., appear to have been absent from the New World, and were only brought in by White conquerors and their Black slaves. My hypothesis is that native American medical care systems--especially in the more culturally advanced areas--were sufficiently sophisticated to deal with native disease entities with reasonable competence. But native medical systems could not cope with the "crowd-type" disease imports that struck Indian and Eskimos as "virgin-field" populations. Reanalysis of native population losses through a genocidal combination of diease, war, slavery and attendant cultural disruption by Dobyns, Cook and others strongly suggest that traditiona estimates underplayed the death toll by a factor of the general order of ten. This would make for an immediately pre-contact Indian population of some 90-111 million instead of the tradition 8-11 million. Evidence is growing that Indians may have been no more susceptible to new pathogens that are other "virgin soil" populations, and thus their immune systems need not be considered less effective than those in other people. Present-day high mortality rates in Indians of both continents from infectious disease imports may be more socioeconomic than anything else.
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PMID:Aboriginal new world epidemiolgy and medical care, and the impact of Old World disease imports. 79 20

Utilizing cryostat sections of mouse heart as antigen, antibodies in the sera of patients with Chagas' disease were investigated for autoimmune-type interation. Sera from 47 normal, 70 patients with various contagious diseases, 116 sera from persons with leishmaniasis, and 90 from persons with Chagas' disease were evaluated. Antibodies in 44% of the sera tested from persons from Chile with xenodiagnostically proven infections of Chagas' disease showed antibodies that interacted with the heart sections of 65 sera from Brazil, 29 were positive by the complement fixation test, and 25 of these reacted with the heart sections. Of the 116 leishmania sera, 24 (20.7%) were reactive in the test. A second type of staining of heart tissue reported for patients with leishmaniasis was observed in 23 sera from patients with this disease and 34 sera from patients with syphilis, rheumatic fever, and malaria. This reaction was not observed in normal sera or in sera from patients with Chagas' disease.
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PMID:Evaluation of an autoimmune type antibody in the sera of patients with Chagas' disease. 82 45

The authors present the results of an inquiry conducted in the principal hospitals of Algeria. The number of cases of visceral leishmaniasis recorded over the last ten years (1965 to 1974) totaled 497. The disease occurs essentially in children under 5 years of age (94%); it is mainly detected in central and eastern parts of the Tell region: principally in the Grande Kabylie, Algerois and Constantinois areas (humid and sub-humid bioclimatic stages). The results of the malaria eradication campaign in relation to the incidence of visceral Leishmaniasis is discussed.
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PMID:[Epidemiology of leishmaniasis in Algeria. 6. Survey of clinical cases of infantile visceral leishmaniasis from 1965 to 1974]. 103 77

The specificity of a circulating antibody observed in American trypanosomiasis and reacting with endocardium, blood vessels, and the interstitium of striated muscle (EVI factor) was evaluated in the indirect fluorescent antibody test with 60 sera from patients with malaria, leishmaniasis, echinococcosis, amebiasis, African trypanosomiasis, toxoplasmosis, and trichinosis, collected from areas where Chagas' disease is not endemic. Two sera, 1 from a patient with Plasmodium falciparum malaria and 1 from a patient with a relapse pretreatment post kala-azar dermal leishmaniasis, were positive for the EVI factor. In the leishmaniasis group, 3 of 8 sera reacted with 0ovine, murine, and human skeletal muscle. In this reaction, which differs from the EVI test, the sarcolemma and the intracellular structures were stained.
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PMID:Investigation of the EVI antibody in parasitic diseases other than American trypanosomiasis. An anti-skeletal muscle antibody in leishmaniasis. 108 66

A glycoconjugate antigen of 27-39 kDa was isolated from a cell-free extract of Leishmania donovani by affinity chromatography using a Concanavalin-A sepharose-4B column and eluted with 0.5 M alpha-methylmannoside. The antigen was recognized specifically by sera from kala-azar (visceral leishmaniasis) patients and did not react with sera from tuberculosis, leprosy or malaria patients. The antigen may therefore be useful in developing a serodiagnostic assay for visceral leishmaniasis.
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PMID:Leishmania donovani: isolation of a concanavalin-A specific antigen and its evaluation for serodiagnosis of visceral leishmaniasis. 128 99


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