HUMAN CUTANEOUS LEISHMANIASIS CAUSED BY LEISHMANIA-DONOVANI SL IN KENYA

Our laboratory is characterizing Leishmania stabilates and isolates fr om active leishmaniasis cases. Smears and cultures from aspirates made on different dates from a single lesion on the bridge of the nose of an 18 years old Kenyan male from Nyandarua District contained Leishman ia. The isolates, NLB-271 and NLB-271-IA, were characterized by cellul ose acetate electrophoresis (CAE) using 20 enzyme systems and by South ern analysis using 2 deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) probes (pDK10 and pDK 20) from a Dakar strain of L. major (MHOM/SN/00/DK1) and a third probe , p7-059 from L. infantum strain ITMAP-263. Digestion of the two Leish mania DNAs with endonucleases HindIII and PstI, followed by hybridizat ion with the 3 probes, revealed DNA fragment banding patterns indistin guishable from those of the L. donovani species complex. The CAE isoen zyme profiles of these 2 Kenyan isolates were indistinguishable from t hose of Kenyan L. donovani strains we designated as zymodeme Z6. Exclu ding post-kala-azar dermal leishmaniasis, this constitutes the first h uman case of cutaneous leishmaniasis caused by L. donovani s.l. in Ken ya. Previously, cutaneous leishmaniasis cases in Kenya have been due t o L. aethiopica, L. major and L. tropica only.