Sandflies in an urban area of transmission of visceral leishmaniasis in midwest Brazil

Maria Elizabeth Cavalheiros Dorval,Eunice Aparecida Bianchi Galati,Manoel Sebastião Costa Lima Júnior,Elisa Teruya Oshiro,Geucira Cristaldo,Vânia Lúcia Brandão Nunes,Andreia Fernandes Brilhante

doi:10.1051/parasite/2016035

Maria Elizabeth Cavalheiros Dorval, Eunice Aparecida Bianchi Galati + Show 5 more

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https://doi.org/10.1051/parasite/2016035

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Abstract

The phlebotomine fauna of Campo Grande city, capital of Mato Grosso do Sul state in Brazil, an endemic area for visceral leishmaniasis, has been thoroughly investigated, but all the insect collections were undertaken with automatic light traps. The present study sought to investigate the fauna in this city using Shannon and Disney traps, having human beings and hamsters, respectively, as bait. Both types of traps were installed in forest fragment and peridomiciliary areas in the period from 2007 to 2009. The phlebotomine females were analyzed by PCR for Leishmania identification. Lutzomyia longipalpis was the only species collected in the peridomiciles and rendered a total of 574 specimens with a 5.2:1 male:female ratio. A total of eight species were attracted to the two traps (one of each type) installed in the forest fragment, including: Bichromomyia flaviscutellata, Evandromyia bourrouli, Evandromyia lenti, Lutzomyia longipalpis, Nyssomyia whitmani, Pintomyia christenseni, Psathyromyia bigeniculata, and Sciopemyia sordellii. A total of 143 specimens were collected, Bi. flaviscutellata accounting for 81% and Lu. longipalpis for 1.4% of them. In one female of Lu. longipalpis collected in a Disney trap installed in a peridomicile, Leishmania (Leishmania) infantum DNA was found, thus strengthening the hypothesis that the transmission of leishmaniasis is in fact occurring in the anthropic environment.

Highlights

Campo Grande city, the capital of Mato Grosso do Sul state, is an endemic area for visceral leishmaniasis (VL)
The notification of cases began in the early 2000s, after the first studies of the phlebotomine fauna revealed the presence of Lutzomyia longipalpis, the main vector of the VL agent, at the end of the 1990s
The phlebotomines belonged to seven genera and eight species: Bichromomyia flaviscutellata (Mangabeira, 1942), Evandromyia bourrouli (Barretto & Coutinho, 1941), Evandromyia lenti (Mangabeira, 1938), Lutzomyia longipalpis (Lutz & Neiva, 1912), Nyssomyia whitmani (Antunes & Coutinho, 1939), Pintomyia christenseni (Young & Duncan, 1994), Psathyromyia bigeniculata (Floch & Abonnenc, 1941), and Sciopemyia sordellii (Shannon & Del Ponte, 1927)

Summary

Introduction

Campo Grande city, the capital of Mato Grosso do Sul state, is an endemic area for visceral leishmaniasis (VL). Several studies have been conducted in Campo Grande sampling forest and anthropic environments to better understand the diversity of species, as well as aspects of insect behavior [2, 22,23,24]. In all these studies, the phlebotomine fauna was sampled using only automatic light traps. To understand the natural history of the parasites transmitted by these insects, and to incriminate a particular species of phlebotomine as a Leishmania vector, beyond the repeated isolation of the parasite in the phlebotomine, one needs to consider aspects of the diversity of the species in the area in which the disease occurs, their relative abundance, the determination of the degree of anthropophily and zoophily of the species, and their ecological distribution [11, 16].

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