Tracing immunity to human leishmaniasis

People who have recovered from leishmaniasis are believed to have long-lasting protection against subsequent infection. Understanding the immunological changes that are associated with protection from cure of and susceptibility to the disease are fundamental to both designing and evaluating vaccine candidates against the leishmaniases. In the quest for a vaccine against leishmaniasis, appropriate surrogate markers of immunity would be valuable and cost effective. Biomarkers would ease screening and selection of potentially efficient vaccine candidates. Moreover, biomarkers of disease may be used to monitor disease and aid therapeutic prognosis. This would be useful in the evaluation of both existing and new drugs, making invasive post-treatment evaluation redundant. Biomarkers may also be indicative of the severity of the disease and may be able to predict the outcome of an infection and indicate whether the patient will spontaneously recover, exhibit mild symptoms or if the disease is disseminating and will be severe. In this article we discuss the immunological changes associated with different forms of human leishmaniasis and the value of appropriate immunological biomarkers in finding an effective vaccine and an evaluation of therapies against leishmanial disease will be given.