Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2002 Mar 30;359(9312):1124-5.
doi: 10.1016/s0140-6736(02)08160-6.

Leishmania in discarded syringes from intravenous drug users

I Cruz  1 , M A Morales, I Noguer, A Rodríguez, J Alvar
Affiliations

Leishmania in discarded syringes from intravenous drug users

I Cruz et al. Lancet. .

Abstract

Needle sharing by intravenous drug users (IVDUs) has been proposed as providing an alternative, artificial, and anthroponotic cycle for leishmania transmission. We looked for parasites in syringes discarded by IVDUs using two different PCR techniques. Leishmania spp were detected in 65 (52%) of 125 syringes collected in southern Madrid, Spain, in 1998, and in 52 (34%) of 154 collected in southwestern Madrid in 2000-01. We found shared restriction fragment length polymorphisms in 12 of 65 positive samples tested, suggesting that syringe sharing can indeed promote the spread of leishmania clones among IVDUs.

PubMed Disclaimer

Comment in

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources