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Case Reports
. 2021 Jun;27(6):1714-1717.
doi: 10.3201/eid2706.204198.

Cutaneous Leishmaniasis Caused by an Unknown Leishmania Strain, Arizona, USA

Marcos de Almeida, Yueli Zheng, Fernanda S Nascimento, Henry Bishop, Vitaliano A Cama, Dhwani Batra, Yvette Unoarumhi, Abaseen K Afghan, Vivian Y Shi, Philip E LeBoit, Eugene W Liu, Fariba M Donovan
Case Reports

Cutaneous Leishmaniasis Caused by an Unknown Leishmania Strain, Arizona, USA

Marcos de Almeida et al. Emerg Infect Dis. 2021 Jun.

Abstract

We investigated an autochthonous case of cutaneous leishmaniasis caused by a genetically different Leishmania sp. in a patient in Arizona, USA. This parasite was classified into the subgenus Leishmania on the basis of multilocus DNA sequence and phylogenetic analyses of the rRNA locus and 11 reference genes.

Keywords: Arizona; Leishmania; United States; autochthonous leishmaniasis; clinical case; cutaneous leishmaniasis; leishmaniasis; parasites; subgenus; unknown strain; vector-borne infections; zoonoses.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Cultured Leishmania promastigotes of the strain isolated from a patient in Arizona, USA. Morphologic features include a slender elongated body that contains a kinetoplast (K) anterior to the nucleus (N) and flagellum (F). The parasite had a total body length of ≈15 μm. Giemsa-stained; scale bar indicates 10 μm.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Phylogenetic tree of Leishmania subgenus isolates from a patient in Arizona, USA, and reference Leishmania species in relationship to species in the subgenera Leishmania, Viannia, and Mundina. A) Phylogenetic tree of Leishmania 18S rRNA genes. Sequences of Crithidia fasciculata and Leptomonas seymouri are included as references. L. (V.) panamensis (GenBank accession no. GQ332362); L. (V.) braziliensis (accession no. GQ332355); L. (L) mexinana (accession no. GQ332260); L. (L.) infantum (accession no. GQ332359); L. (L.) donovani (accession no. GQ332356); L. (M.) martiniquensis (accession no. AF303938); L. (M.) enriettii (accession no. ATAF02000704); Leptomonas seymore (accession no. KP717894); and Crithidia fasciculata (accession no. Y00055). The 2 non-Leishmania trypanosomatids (Leptomonas seymore and Crithidia fasciculata) were included in the phylogenetic tree because they were previously described as co-infecting parasites in human leishmaniasis cases. B) Phylogenetic tree of glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase genes. Sequences from Crithidia fasciculata and Leptomonas seymouri were included as references. Numbers along branches indicate bootstrap values. Scale bars indicate nucleotide substitutions per site.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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