The prevalence of antibodies against Leishmania donovani in selected domestic and wild animal species in 2 villages in Sudan with active L. donovani transmission in humans was investigated. Screening of domestic animals (donkeys, cows, sheep, goats, camels and dogs) with the direct agglutination test (DAT) detected reaction rates above the cut-off titres in donkeys (68.7%), cows (21.4%) and goats (8.5%), and which were also found in wild rats (5.5%). Sera of sheep, camels and dogs had a weak agglutination reaction below the cut-off titre. Testing of the same sera by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), against a lysate of L. donovani promastigotes, showed reaction rates above the cut-off optical density in cows (47.6%), goats (13.6%), and in rats (4.1%). No Leishmania parasite was isolated from spleen, liver, bone-marrow or spleen of Nile rats.

The pharmacokinetics of primaquine have been well defined in male volunteers, but there is little data on the disposition of the drug in women. We compared the kinetics of primaquine in nine male and nine female healthy Australian volunteers after the administration of a single oral dose (30 mg base) of primaquine. No statistical differences were observed in the following kinetic parameters of primaquine between men and women, respectively: maximum plasma concentration (93 +/- 26 and 115 +/- 38 ng/mL; 95% confidence interval [CI] of the mean difference: -55 to 10 ng/mL; P = 0.16), area under the curve (1.1 +/- 0.5 and 1.2 +/- 0.4 microg x h/mL; 95% CI: -0.6 to 0.3 microg x h/mL; P = 0.54), and clearance (0.34 +/- 0.12 and 0.39 +/- 0.14 L/h/kg; 95% CI: -0.17 to 0.08 L/h/kg; P = 0.46). The clinical relevance of such findings would suggest that sex does not have to be taken into account as a factor when prescribing primaquine for radical cure or terminal prophylaxis of Plasmodium vivax malaria.

No abstract

DNA barcoding is a molecular genetics technique commonly applied for species identification based on the cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) gene located on the mitochondrial DNA genome. Based on our analysis, the DNA barcodes were generated from 16 specimen of Coccinella (family Coccinellidae). All the samples were collected from diverse sites in Egypt and Libya. Morphological traits based on the number of dorsal spots, DNA extraction, PCR amplification of COI, sequencing, nucleotide BLAST, and phylogenetics analyses were used to classify the specimens. A phylogenetic tree was constructed using the maximum likelihood method, including 46 COI sequences (the study and NCBI sequences). Three Coccinella clusters were defined and classified as Coccinella septempunctata, Coccinella novemnotata, and Coccinella undecimpunctata each species clustered into a unique branch. DNA barcodes discriminated clearly against the analyzed species. This study validated the COI efficiency as a marker for DNA barcoding of insects (Coccinella, family Coccinellidae).