Infectiousness in a cohort of brazilian dogs: why culling fails to control visceral leishmaniasis in areas of high transmission

The elimination of seropositive dogs in Brazil has been used to control zoonotic visceral leishmaniasis but with little success. To elucidate the reasons for this, the infectiousness of 50 sentinel dogs exposed to natural Leishmania chagasi infection was assessed through time by xenodiagnosis with t...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Courtenay, Orin, Quinnell, Rupert J, Santos, Lourdes Maria Garcez dos, Shaw, Jeffrey Jon, Dye, Christopher
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2002
País:Brasil
Institución:Instituto Evandro Chagas (IEC)
Repositorio:Repositório Digital do Instituto Evandro Chagas (Patuá)
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:patua.iec.gov.br:iec/1040
Acceso en línea:https://patua.iec.gov.br/handle/iec/1040
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Leishmaniose Visceral / prevenção & controle
Leishmania infantum / patogenicidade
Xenodiagnóstico / métodos
Insetos Vetores
Cães
Descripción
Sumario:The elimination of seropositive dogs in Brazil has been used to control zoonotic visceral leishmaniasis but with little success. To elucidate the reasons for this, the infectiousness of 50 sentinel dogs exposed to natural Leishmania chagasi infection was assessed through time by xenodiagnosis with the sandfly vector, Lutzomyia longipalpis. Eighteen (43%) of 42 infected dogs became infectious after a median of 333 days in the field (105 days after seroconversion). Seven highly infectious dogs (17%) accounted for 180% of sandfly infections. There were positive correlations between infectiousness and anti-Leishmania immunoglobulin G, parasite detection by polymerase chain reaction, and clinical disease (logistic regression, –0.18). The sen- 2 r p 0.08 sitivity of enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay to detect currently infectious dogs was high (96%) but lower in the latent period (!63%), and specificity was low (24%). Mathematical modeling suggests that culling programs fail because of high incidence of infection and infectiousness, the insensitivity of the diagnostic test to detect infectious dogs, and time delays between diagnosis and culling.