Lordêlo Bianca, Magalhães Andréa, Noronha Almério, Oliveira Livia, Beiting Daniel, Scott Phillip, Carvalho Edgar M, Carvalho Lucas P
Laboratório de Pesquisas Clínicas, Gonçalo Moniz Institute, FIOCRUZ, Salvador, Brazil.
Serviço de Imunologia, Universidade Federal da Bahia, Salvador, Brazil.
Open Forum Infect Dis. 2025 Jan 15;12(2):ofae749. doi: 10.1093/ofid/ofae749. eCollection 2025 Feb.
is the most prevalent agent causing cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) in Brazil. While inflammation is a hallmark of CL, few parasites are found at the lesion site, leading to challenges regarding diagnosis. Using kDNA and human 18S rRNA as targets, the present study developed a quantitative polymerase chain reaction assay to determine parasite load in biopsies from patients with CL who were residing in an endemic area in northeastern Brazil. In addition, we investigated whether parasite load correlated with clinical outcome, and we observed that patients with higher parasite load were more likely to experience therapy failure. Moreover, patients with CL in the early phase of infection presented higher levels of parasite transcripts than individuals in later phases. Thus, our results suggest that parasite load as determined by quantitative polymerase chain reaction may constitute a valuable prognostic tool to aid in the determination of disease severity and treatment outcome.
是巴西引起皮肤利什曼病（CL）最常见的病原体。虽然炎症是CL的一个标志，但在病变部位发现的寄生虫很少，这给诊断带来了挑战。本研究以kDNA和人类18S rRNA为靶点，开发了一种定量聚合酶链反应检测方法，以确定居住在巴西东北部流行地区的CL患者活检组织中的寄生虫载量。此外，我们研究了寄生虫载量是否与临床结果相关，并且我们观察到寄生虫载量较高的患者更有可能出现治疗失败。此外，处于感染早期的CL患者比后期的个体呈现出更高水平的寄生虫转录本。因此，我们的结果表明，通过定量聚合酶链反应确定的寄生虫载量可能构成一种有价值的预后工具，有助于确定疾病严重程度和治疗结果。
