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
Review
. 2021 Mar 26:12:660183.
doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2021.660183. eCollection 2021.

Host-Directed Therapies for Cutaneous Leishmaniasis

Fernanda O Novais  1 , Camila Farias Amorim  2 , Phillip Scott  2
Affiliations
Review

Host-Directed Therapies for Cutaneous Leishmaniasis

Fernanda O Novais et al. Front Immunol. .

Abstract

Cutaneous leishmaniasis exhibits a wide spectrum of clinical presentations from self-resolving infections to severe chronic disease. Anti-parasitic drugs are often ineffective in the most severe forms of the disease, and in some cases the magnitude of the disease can result from an uncontrolled inflammatory response rather than unrestrained parasite replication. In these patients, host-directed therapies offer a novel approach to improve clinical outcome. Importantly, there are many anti-inflammatory drugs with known safety and efficacy profiles that are currently used for other inflammatory diseases and are readily available to be used for leishmaniasis. However, since leishmaniasis consists of a wide range of clinical entities, mediated by a diverse group of leishmanial species, host-directed therapies will need to be tailored for specific types of leishmaniasis. There is now substantial evidence that host-directed therapies are likely to be beneficial beyond autoimmune diseases and cancer and thus should be an important component in the armamentarium to modulate the severity of cutaneous leishmaniasis.

Keywords: cutaneous leishmaniasis; cytokines; host-directed therapies; immunopathology; skin immunity.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Host directed therapies that promote better parasite control. DCL- Diffuse cutaneous leishmaniasis; LCL- Localized cutaneous leishmaniasis.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Host directed therapies that block immunopathologic mediated cytolysis. ML, mucosal leishmaniasis; LCL, Localized cutaneous leishmaniasis.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Scott P, Novais FO. Cutaneous leishmaniasis: immune responses in protection and pathogenesis. Nat Rev Immunol (2016) 16:581–92. 10.1038/nri.2016.72 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Kaye P, Scott P. Leishmaniasis: complexity at the host-pathogen interface. Nat Rev Microbiol (2011) 9:604–15. 10.1038/nrmicro2608 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Carvalho AM, Guimarães LH, Costa R, Saldanha MG, Prates I, Carvalho LP, et al. Impaired Th1 response is associated therapeutic failure in patients with cutaneous leishmaniasis caused by Leishmania braziliensis. J Infect Dis (2020) 223:527–35. 10.1093/infdis/jiaa374 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Unger A, O’Neal S, Machado PRL, Guimarães LH, Morgan DJ, Schriefer A, et al. Association of treatment of American cutaneous leishmaniasis prior to ulcer development with high rate of failure in northeastern Brazil. Am J Trop Med Hyg (2009) 80:574–9. 10.4269/ajtmh.2009.80.574 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Kaufmann SHE, Dorhoi A, Hotchkiss RS, Bartenschlager R. Host-directed therapies for bacterial and viral infections. Nat Rev Drug Discovery (2018) 17:35–56. 10.1038/nrd.2017.162 - DOI - PMC - PubMed

Publication types

MeSH terms

Substances

LinkOut - more resources