Abstract:
Cutaneous leishmaniasis is a parasitic infection caused by a flagellate parasite of the genus
Leishmania. It is most often a zoonotic disease transmitted by the bite of sandflies. Although
each species of Leishmania may have its own specific skin manifestations and endemic areas,
the most common presentations are crusty nodules and plaques. This disease has a worldwide
distribution in the Americas, Asia, Europe and particularly Africa. Its
epidemiology is influenced by environmental, migratory and climatic factors. The of
this work is to understand the dynamics of transmission, the geographical distribution and thus
to optimize the epidemiological approaches and the molecular characterization of
strains isolated from a few patients in the Ghardaïa region
In this context, we amplified the DNA of Leishmania, using primers specific to the
species, obtained by scraping slides from cutanuous samples of positif patients with cutaneous
leishmaniasis (CL) clinically suspected at the EPSP EL-Atteuf Ghardaïa laboratory to
determine whether other Leishmania species were responsible for CL in Ghardaïa and assess
its geographical location.
The results obtained from the epidemiological study show that CL in our study area affects
more men than women (30 men / 18 women) whose average age is 32.1 ± 19.5 years.
Clinically, the lesions were most often found on the uncovered parts, mainly the lower limbs
(73.03%) and upper limbs (30.33%) with lesions varying between 1 and 5 cm in diameter. The
regions of El Atteuf, Ghardaïa center (surrounding the ksar) and Bonoura represent the three
most important foci in our study.
Parasitological examination of 89 cases revealed amastigote forms in 48 samples (53.93%) while the remaining 41 cases (46.06%) gave a negative result. Among the only 20% of the positive samples (10) used for the study of molecular identification by PCR and RFLP, Leishmania tropica was the only Leishmania species that could be isolated and identified in the El-Atteuf region of Ghardaïa which can cause CL.
