Co-infection of Leishmania infantum and a Crithidia-related species in a case of refractory relapsed visceral leishmaniasis with non-ulcerated cutaneous manifestation in Brazil

Abstract

We report a refractory and relapsed visceral leishmaniasis case in a male child patient followed from 2016 to 2020, whose clinical isolates from multiple relapses were analyzed at the genome level. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first report that both visceral leishmaniasis and non-ulcerated cutaneous leishmaniasis have concomitantly manifested in the same patient. Importantly, sequence analysis revealed that the patient was co-infected with Leishmania infantum and a Crithidia-related parasite, which was previously found in a fatal case of visceral leishmaniasis from the same endemic region.

Keywords: Crithidia sp; Leishmania infantum; Non-ulcerated cutaneous leishmaniasis (NUCL); Trypanosomatid co-infection; Visceral leishmaniasis (VL); Whole-genome sequencing analysis.