Avaliação clínico-laboratorial e do xenodiagnóstico de cães com anticorpos anti-leishmania e de cães vacinados com Leishmune, provenientes de área endêmica para leishmaniose visceral canina

Abstract

Visceral leishmaniasis (VL) is a severe disease, but still neglected in under developing countries. Dogs are its principal reservoir, as well as a strategic target in the disease control. The development of vaccines and the study of its properties have been the focus of several and exhaustive researches. In the present studies, 33 dogs with anti-Leishmania and 46 vaccinated with Leishmune®, were clinically examined, and categorized according to their clinical signs. According to their clinical and laboratorial findings, dogs were divided in sub groups. Leishmune® vaccinated animals showed no alterations on the hematological or biochemical profiles, as naturally 81,8% of the infected dogs showed normocytic/normochromic anemia, besides dysproteinemias, mainly characterized as reduction A/G relation. Only 33,3% and 36,9% of vaccinated dogs demonstrated positive results in xenodiagnoses and qPCR examinations, while these results were 68,7% and 93,9% in the dogs with anti-Leishmania group. When analyzing bone marrow qPCR studies, vaccinated positive dogs showed only 916,2 copies/mL of Leishmania DNA, while these results were 78.752.966,92 copies/mL in dogs with anti-Leishmania. Regarding IgG ELISA study, there was significant difference between groups when Leishmania soluble antigen was used, but not with FML antigen. It was demonstrated that the use Leishmune® was able to reduce sand flies infection, as well as bone marrow parasite load, and can be used as an important tool in the reduction od the disease morbidity and spreading.