First Report of an Urban Case of Canine Visceral Leishmaniasis in the Municipality of Cali, Colombia.

We present a CVL case involving a 2-year-old male dog with a history of lack of appetite, general weakness, and progressive loss of weight. A diagnosis of CVL was obtained using the direct parasitological examination in spleen and bone marrow samples stained with Giemsa. The infecting Leishmania species was identified as L. infantum by PCR-restriction fragment length polymorphism amplifying the Hsp70 gene from bone marrow and spleen samples. The patient responded favorably to treatment with intramuscular meglumine antimoniate at a dose of 100 mg/kg daily for 8 weeks and oral allopurinol at a dose of 10 mg/kg every 12 hours until new indication. This is the first report of urban CVL in the city of Cali, Colombia, highlighting the need for surveillance and control programs in the municipalities of the department of Valle del Cauca, a region where VL has not been informed before. The findings also indicate the need to reinforce the surveillance programs in other rural and urban regions of the country where favorable eco-epidemiological conditions exist. PMID: 31802736 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Am J Trop Med Hyg - Category: Infectious Diseases Authors: Tags: Am J Trop Med Hyg Source Type: research