Evaluation of two new targets for MLST of Leishmania

LOCATELLI F; MARCO JD; LAUTHIER JJ; BARROSO P; MORISAWA K; BASOMBRÍO MA; HASHIGUCHI Y; KORENAGA M

Tokyo

Encuentro; The 52th Annual Meeting of Japanese Society of Tropical Medicine and The 26th Annual Meeting of Japan Association for International Health; 2011

Japanese Society of Tropical Medicine and Japan Association for International Health

Leishmaniasis is a zoonotic disease caused by a parasite of the genus Leishmania. The clinical manifestation goes from the less several forms (cutaneous leishmaniasis) to the visceral form which is severer and can be deathly if remained without treatment. Several different species of Leishmania spp. Have been described throughout South America. In Argentina two species, Leishmania (V.) braziliensis and L. (L.) infantum, have recently emerged. Because of the high variability and diversity in the genus, it is necessary to have an accurate method for typing. Multilocus Enzyme Electrophoresis (MLEE) is the reference method suggested by the WHO for identification and typing of Leishmania, this technique is laborious, slow, and also different allozyme may have coincidental mobility. Therefore, DNA analysis methods have been proposed without the disadvantages mentioned. These methods stand been used for Leishmania and other diploid organisms. The first MLST scheme proposed for bacteria typing, but recently have been used for Leishmania and other diploid organisms. The first MLST scheme proposed is difficult to accomplish, because it is necessary to develop a new strategy with new targets much shorter and capable to identify the different species of Leishmania. In this work we evaluated two new targets (ASAT and 6PGD) and tested over both 8 reference strains and 8 different strains from Argentina.