Windows into leishmaniasis epidemiology in the United States: September 2021 through August 2022

Abstract

Leishmaniasis is a rare disease in the United States, with an estimated annual incidence of dozens of cases occurring primarily in travelers, migrants, and military personnel. True disease incidence is unknown, since leishmaniasis is not a nationally notifiable condition. Here, we describe the results of molecular leishmaniasis over a 1-year interval (September 2021 to August 2022) when our laboratory served as the primary national reference laboratory for molecular diagnosis of civilian leishmaniasis. We tested 218 specimens submitted from 36 states yielding 94/186 (50.5%) positive cases with species or species complex-level identification and 18 novel mini-exon alleles. Most species belonged to subgenus Viannia (75.6%) and associated with cutaneous or mucocutaneous disease. Cases were associated with recent travel (18.1%), travel timing unspecified (7.4%), migration (7.4%), remote travel (2.1%), military (1.1%), or unknown history (63.8%). These data illustrate the clinical utility of molecular testing for leishmaniasis and provide unique insight into disease epidemiology.

The Preclinical Validation of 405 nm Light Parasiticidal Efficacy on Leishmania donovani in Ex Vivo Platelets in a Rag2−/− Mouse Model

“…Therefore, Leishmania has been considered endemic to the United States since 2015. Studies of a Leishmania infection epidemiology in the U.S. are limited to the surveillance of armed forces members, case reports, and multicenter observational studies [ 11 ]. Since the majority of Leishmania infections result in asymptomatic cases [ 10 ], inactivating this parasite in platelets through PRTs is a more practical way to mitigate the TTI risk.…”