What is it about?
Leishmaniases are diseases caused by Leishmania parasites, which affect around 12 million people in the world. These parasites are transmitted to man and other mammals by sandflies during their blood meal. Once in the mammals, the parasites are phagocytized by macrophages and live inside theses cells. PH8 and LV79 are two strains of Leishmania that have different virulence in mouse experimental model. In this work, we compared the infectivity of the two strains in macrophages, their surface protein contents and their morphologies.
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Why is it important?
To survive in man and cause disease, Leishmania has first to be recognized and internalized by macrophages. The comparison of the surface proteins of two strains with different virulence may help us identify factors involved in parasite internalization, which can be further explored for drug or vaccine design.
Perspectives
Through this article, I hope to stimulate a broader audience to pay attention to neglected diseases such as leishmaniases, which affect millions of people worldwide. A joint effort of several areas will certainly benefit the management of the disease, as well as all the scientific community.
Beatriz Stolf
University of Sao Paulo
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Proteome and morphological analysis show unexpected differences between promastigotes of Leishmania amazonensis PH8 and LV79 strains, PLoS ONE, August 2022, PLOS,
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0271492.
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