Waseem Sajjad

Leishmaniasis is a vector-borne disease caused by an obligate intramacrophage protozoan named Leishmania. Leishmaniasis is one of the most important human protozoan parasitic diseases in the globe, with a prevalence of 12 million infections. More than 350 million people are considered at risk of contracting leishmaniasis, and 2 million cases occur yearly in tropical and subtropical countries. Current study was conducted to find out the outbreak of leishmaniasis and to construct the phylogenetic relationship based upon the sequencing of leishmania cytochrome-B gene. Total 100 samples positive for Cutaneous Leishmania (CL) were taken from different tribal districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). They all were confirmed by PCR of cytochrome-B gene. Among 100 patients, 71% male were children and 29% were female children. 89% children were between the age of 1-12 years and 11% were teenagers. Out of 100 samples 25 were randomly selected for sanger sequencing after the amplification of cytochrome-B gene. The cytochrome-B based sequence analysis showed that two major strains were reported in the tribal districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (23, Leishmania Tropica; 1, leishmania infantum). Six species of the L. tropica were reported closely related with the Tunisia and China L. tropica species, while the leishmania infantum specie was reported closely related with L. donovani and L.infantum reported from china. The SNPs changes were reported in the alignment of the sequences which makes 5 groups of the L. tropica specie. The tribal districts of KP are important in tracking possible ingress of leishmaniasis.