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Leishmaniasis is a wide array of clinical manifestations caused by protozoal parasites of the Trypanosomatida genus Leishmania. [7] It is generally spread through the bite of phlebotomine sandflies, Phlebotomus and Lutzomyia, and occurs most frequently in the tropics and sub-tropics of Africa, Asia, the Americas, and southern Europe.
Leishmania / l iː ʃ ˈ m eɪ n i ə,-ˈ m æ n-/ [1] is a parasitic protozoan, a single-celled organism of the genus Leishmania that is responsible for the disease leishmaniasis. [2] [3] [4] They are spread by sandflies of the genus Phlebotomus in the Old World, and of the genus Lutzomyia in the New World.
Leishmania donovani is a species of intracellular parasites belonging to the genus Leishmania, a group of haemoflagellate kinetoplastids that cause the disease leishmaniasis. It is a human blood parasite responsible for visceral leishmaniasis or kala-azar, the most severe form of leishmaniasis.
Many of the most prevalent and deadly human diseases are caused by a protozoan infection, including African sleeping sickness, amoebic dysentery, and malaria. The species originally termed "protozoa" are not closely related to each other and only have superficial similarities ( eukaryotic , unicellular , motile , though with exceptions).
Cutaneous leishmaniasis is commonly characterized with skin lesions, which can appear localized, or throughout the body. While mucocutaneous leishmaniasis is characterized with ulcers around the skin, mouth, and nose. This form of Leishmaniasis has also been known to can spread by metastasis and can be deadly. [2]
Mucocutaneous leishmaniasis is an especially disturbing form of cutaneous leishmaniasis, because it produces destructive and disfiguring lesions of the face. It is most often caused by Leishmania braziliensis, but cases caused by L. aethiopica have also been described. [10] Mucocutaneous leishmaniasis is very difficult to treat.
L. tropica causes a broad spectrum of leishmaniasis forms in humans. Most common is a variant called dry-type cutaneous leishmaniasis. After an incubation period lasting more than 2 months, a small brownish nodular lesion will appear with a slowly extending plaque reaching a size of 1–2 centimetres (0.39–0.79 in) after 6 months.
Visceral leishmaniasis (VL), also known as kala-azar (Hindi: kālā āzār, "black sickness") [2] or "black fever", is the most severe form of leishmaniasis and, without proper diagnosis and treatment, is associated with high fatality. [3] Leishmaniasis is a disease caused by protozoan parasites of the genus Leishmania.