Vet Pathology Wiki

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Which is true for Leishmania infection?

The amastigote live in the salivary gland of sand flies

The promastigote stage replicates in digestive tract of the sand fly

The infection is cleared by a predominant Th2 inflammatory response

Leishmania parasites have low iron requirements for survival

The promastigote replicates in the gut of the sandfly and is the infective form of the parasite. Once inside macrophages promastigotes transform to amastigotes and replicate - infecting successive cycles of macrophages. They are highly dependent on iron and have iron transport protein ZRT. Their dense lipophosphoglycan glycocalyx stops C3b from forming the MAC. But the parasite keeps C3b to be phagocytosed by macrophages.