2023 AUG 26 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Pediatrics Week -- The first case of concomitant visceral leishmaniasis and non-ulcerated cutaneous leishmaniasis in the same patient has been reported recently by researchers at the Federal University of Sao Carlos (UFSCar) in Sao Paulo state, Brazil, in an article published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases. The study was funded by FAPESP and draws attention to novel aspects of a disease that is advancing nationwide.
The patient, a nine-year-old boy admitted to the hospital run by the Federal University of Sergipe (UFS), was infected by Leishmania infantum, a protozoan parasite that causes visceral leishmaniasis, and by another parasite of an as-yet unconfirmed species belonging to the genus Crithidia that causes symptoms similar to those of leishmaniasis, or even more severe symptoms in some cases.
In the Americas, Brazil is the country most affected by visceral leishmaniasis (VL), the most serious form of the disease, which can be lethal if it is not correctly treated or is misdiagnosed. The main agent of VL is L. infantum. Typical symptoms include weakness, weight loss, fever, an enlarged spleen and liver, and pancytopenia, i.e. low levels of all three blood cell types (red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets).
The advance of genomics in recent years has enabled researchers to find out that leishmaniasis patients can be co-infected with other genera of trypanosomatids in addition to Leishmania, such as Leptomonas and Crithidia, which in principle are not pathogenic to humans, or Trypanosoma, a genus of protozoan parasites that includes the agent of Chagas disease. Cases like these used to be associated with immunosuppression but are now seen in people with...