Investigation of the etiological agents of leishmaniasis in the Volta region of Ghana. (360G-Wellcome-090678_Z_09_Z)

The first goal of the project will be to establish in vitro cultures of Ghanaian Leishmania. Lesion aspirates will be collected from patients recruited into the study and inoculated into culture media. Transformation and growth of promastigotes will be monitored and positive cultures will be expanded and cryopreserved. The second goal is to isolate DNA from cultured parasites and use this in PCR, PCR-RFLP, cloning and sequencing to establish the identity of the species (which may be novel). Results will be compared to an extensive bank of validated reference isolates. The third goal will be to investigate the relationship of Ghanaian Leishmania to parasites from other endemic foci in Africa and elsewhere using bioinformatic analysis of DNA sequences and/or microsatellite data (the choice depending on the specific identity of the parasite). This will enable an assessment to be made as to whether the disease has been present in Ghana for some time but unidentified, possibly as a zoonosis, or whether it has been recently introduced from elsewhere and become locally established.