Intracellular growth and pathogenesis of Leishmania parasites

Parasitic protozoa belonging to the genus Leishmania are the cause of a spectrum of diseases in humans, as well as chronic long-term infections. These parasites exhibit a remarkable capacity to survive and proliferate within the phagolysosome compartment of host macrophages. Studies with defined Leishmania mutants in mouse models of infection have highlighted processes that are required for parasite survival in macrophages. Parasite mutants have been identified that (i) are poorly virulent when the insect (promastigote) stage is used to initiate infection, but retain wild-type virulence following transformation to the obligate intracellular amastigote stage, (ii) are highly attenuated when either promastigotes or amastigotes are used, and (iii) are unable to induce characteristic lesion granulomas, but can persist within macrophages in other tissues. From these analyses it can be concluded that promastigote stages of some species require the surface expression of lipophosphoglycan, but not other surface components. Survival and subsequent proliferation of Leishmania in macrophages requires the activation of heat-shock responses (involving the up-regulation and/or phosphorylation of heat-shock proteins), the presence of oxidative and nitrosative defence mechanisms, and uptake and catabolism of carbon sources (glycoproteins, hexoses and amino acids) and essential nutrients (purines, amino acids and vitamins). Parasite mutants with defects in specific kinase/phosphatase-dependent signalling pathways are also severely attenuated in amastigote virulence, highlighting the potential importance of post-translational regulatory mechanisms in parasite adaptation to this host niche.