Leishmaniasis and phlebotomine sand flies in Oman Sultanate.

Jean-Antoine Rioux,Nicole Léger,Jérôme Depaquit,Marina Gramiccia,Philippe Desjeux

doi:10.1051/parasite/2020064

Abstract

There are few data on leishmaniases and sandflies in Oman Sultanate. We carried out an eco-epidemiological study in 1998 in the two main mountains of the country, the Sharqiyah and the Dhofar. This study allowed us to isolate and identify three Leishmania strains from patients exhibiting cutaneous leishmaniasis. The typing carried out by isoenzymatic study and by molecular biology were congruent: two strains of Leishmania donovani zymodeme (Z) MON-31 isolated in the Sharqiyah and one L. tropica ZROM102 (ZMON-39 variant for 4 isoenzymes) from the Dhofar. No strain was isolated from canids. The study of sandflies identified 14 species distributed in the genera Phlebotomus, Sergentomyia and Grassomyia: Ph. papatasi, Ph. bergeroti, Ph. duboscqi, Ph. alexandri, Ph. saevus, Ph. sergenti, Se. fallax, Se. baghdadis, Se. cincta, Se. christophersi, Se. clydei, Se. tiberiadis, Se. africana, and Gr. dreyfussi. In Sharqiyah, the only candidate for the transmission of L. donovani was Ph. alexandri, but the low densities observed of this species do not argue in favor of any role. In Dhofar, Ph. sergenti is the most important proven vector of L. tropica, but Ph. saevus, a locally much more abundant species, constitutes a good candidate for transmission.

Highlights

Leishmaniasis remains poorly documented in Oman Sultanate as well as the fauna of their vectors, Phlebotomine sandflies [5]
The species we caught belonged to the genera Phlebotomus, Sergentomyia and Grassomyia: Phlebotomus (Phlebotomus) papatasi (Scopoli, 1786), Ph. (Phl.) bergeroti Parrot, 1934, Ph. (Phl.) duboscqi Neveu-Lemaire, 1906, Ph. (Paraphlebotomus) alexandri Sinton, 1928, Ph. (Par.) saevus Parrot & Martin, 1939, Ph. (Par.) sergenti Parrot, 1917, Sergentomyia (Sergentomyia) fallax (Parrot, 1921), Se. (Ser.) baghdadis (Adler & Theodor, 1929), Se. (Ser.) cincta (Parrot & Martin, 1944), Se. (Sin.) christophersi (Sinton, 1927), Se. (Sin.) clydei (Sinton, 1928), Se. (Sin.) tiberiadis (Adler, Theodor & Lourie, 1930), Se. (Parrotomyia) africana (Newstead, 1912), and Grassomyia dreyfussi (Parrot, 1933)
Taking into consideration the number of cibarial teeth as a valid specific character, we identified the female specimens of Oman as Se. cincta and associated males, pending revision of this group, using molecular tools to check whether Se. cincta is individualised from Se. antennata

Summary

Introduction

Leishmaniasis remains poorly documented in Oman Sultanate as well as the fauna of their vectors, Phlebotomine sandflies [5]. A few case reports are available in the literature of both visceral (VL) [6, 12, 21,22,23, 30, 63, 64] and cutaneous (CL) [64, 65, 71] leishmaniases. No parasite has been cultured and typed according to gold standard methods (isoenzymes or PCR-RFLP or sequencing of targeted markers) except one strain of L. tropica isolated from a Pakistani patient continuously resident in Oman for the 18 months before parasite isolation [65]. No record of affected animals like dogs has been documented. A few studies have been carried out to identify the sandflies of the Sultanate [36]

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion