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A new standard for the assessment of disease progression in murine cutaneous leishmaniasis
Author(s) -
J.roberts Lynden,
J.foote Simon,
Handman Emanuela
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
parasite immunology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.795
H-Index - 75
eISSN - 1365-3024
pISSN - 0141-9838
DOI - 10.1046/j.1365-3024.2000.00305.x
Subject(s) - cutaneous leishmaniasis , biology , immunology , leishmaniasis , disease , medicine , pathology
Infection of mice with Leishmania major has been used both as a model for the cutaneous disease in humans and as a model for the more general control and function of helper T cells in immunity. In both cases, disease patterns and disease progression have been assessed by two complementary methods, lesion size and parasite burden in the draining lymph nodes. We propose a much improved method for the graphical representation of lesion development which conveys more information with better accuracy. We also describe a polymerase chain reaction method for determining parasite burden, which is faster and allows the analysis of larger numbers of experimental animals than the current limiting dilution analysis. Moreover, these methods are equally applicable to other infectious diseases, an obvious one being schistosomiasis .