Frequência de auto-anticorpos e dosagem de complemento sérico em pacientes com diagnóstico de leishmaniose cutânea ou visceral

Abstract

Leishmaniasis is a chronic infectious disease that can vary of a spectrum that includes isolated cutaneous compromise even with oligo-symptomatic manifestation or systemic with important clinical manifestations. The infection development in each type of leishmaniasis (visceral or cutaneous) it depends on the complex and intriguing interaction between factors of virulence of the parasite and immunologic response of the host. Analysis of patients' serums infected by leishmaniasis, they demonstrated the existence of auto-antibodies against cellular and humoral components. Circulating immune complexes and antibodies against immunoglobulin G (rheumatoid factor) they have been identified in patients with visceral leishmaniasis and cutaneous-mucosal disease. Patient with visceral leishmaniasis they can present symptoms that mimick the clinical picture found in patients with diagnosis of Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE), disturbing the precocious diagnosis and treatment. Therefore, it was aimed at to study the profile immunologic of these patient ones, through the testing a panel of auto-antibodies and complement in the serum of 90 patients, being 45 of them with visceral leishmaniasis and 45 with the form cutaneous. The auto-antibodies present statistically significant in patients with visceral leishmaniasis were: Antinuclear Antibodies (ANA) positive (4,4%) or in low dilution (8,9%) and antibody anti-cardiolipin of the type IgG positive (17,8%) or uncertain (8,9%). Besides, there was decrease of the serum complement C3 in 17,8% of the patients and serodiagnostic anti-Leishmania >1/80 positive in all the patients with visceral leishmaniasis. It is ended that the visceral form of leishmaniasis can be correlated positively with the presence of auto-antibodies, possibly for the unleashing of a systemic response predominantly humoral T-helper type 2.