McIlwee BE, et al. – Researchers assessed whether human cutaneous leishmaniasis is endemic in North America in this cross-sectional multicenter observational study. Findings revealed the disease to be endemic in the United States (US), indicating that it is acquired endemically more frequently than it is through travel, thus supporting the argument of making it a federally reported disease.

Methods

• They reviewed cases of human leishmaniasis occurring 2007-2017 in the US.
• Searching by disease name (leishmaniasis) or International Classification of Diseases, Ninth and Tenth Revisions diagnosis codes in the respective laboratory information systems, researchers identified cases of leishmaniasis.
• They examined deidentified demographics to classify cases of leishmaniasis as one of the following:
• Documentation of no history of travel outside of the US within 10 years;
• Positive history of travel outside of the US within 10 years; or
• Unknown or no documentation of travel history.
• Cases of leishmaniasis considered to be endemic were identified in the patients with documentation of no travel history outside of the US within 10 years.

Results

• Researchers identified 69 novel cases of human cutaneous leishmaniasis.
• Among these, 41 (59%) were endemic; the median age at diagnosis was 61 years (range, 3-89 years), and 28 (68%) of the endemic cases occurred in female patients.
• Documentation of Leishmania speciation was performed by polymerase chain reaction in 22 (32%) cases, and Leishmania mexicana was identified to be the infectious organism in 100% of these cases.