Abstract
Since 1996, there have been several case reports of autochthonous visceral leishmaniasis in Thailand. Here we report a case in a 52-year-old Thai male from northern Thailand, who presented with subacute fever, huge splenomegaly and pancytopenia. Bone marrow aspiration revealed numerous amastigotes within macrophages. Isolation of Leishmania LSCM1 into culture and DNA sequence analysis (ribosomal RNA ITS-1 and large subunit of RNA polymerase II) revealed the parasites to be members of the Leishmania enriettii complex, and apparently identical to L. martiniquensis previously reported from the Caribbean island of Martinique. This is the first report of visceral leishmaniasis caused by L. martiniquensis from the region. Moreover, the majority of parasites previously identified as “L. siamensis” also appear to be L. martiniquensis.
Highlights
The leishmaniases are a group of human parasitic diseases caused by several species of the genus Leishmania and transmitted by the bites of female phlebotomine sand flies [1,2]
We report a case of visceral leishmaniasis in northern Thailand caused by a recently described new species of Leishmania parasite, Leishmania martiniquensis
The view that these reports refer to one species only, the proposed ‘‘L. siamensis’’, needs to be treated with caution as the only common sequence analysed is the rRNA ITS-1, and it is doubtful that this sequence alone is sufficiently taxonomically reliable or informative to reach such a conclusion
Summary
The leishmaniases are a group of human parasitic diseases caused by several species of the genus Leishmania and transmitted by the bites of female phlebotomine sand flies [1,2]. In three of the other reports [5,7,10] the parasites had very similar but non-identical rRNA ITS-1 sequences that differed from other known Leishmania species, and the fourth [9] reported an 18S rRNA sequence identical to that of one of the earlier reports [5] These four reports have been taken by some to indicate that one new species is responsible for leishmaniasis in Thailand, and this has been referred to in the literature as ‘‘Leishmania siamensis’’, the first recorded usage of this name appearing in Muller et al 2009 [11]. To date the species has not been formally named and described, and so here is referred to as ‘‘L. siamensis’’, nor has its relationship to other species of human-infective or non-pathogenic species been
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