Class note: Life Cycle: Leishmania Spp.

The parasite has two stages.
1. The amastigote form, occuring in man eg. in visceral Leishmaniasis  (or other hosts)
2. The amastigote form, occurring in sandfly. Leishmaniasis is  transmitted by the bite of infected female phlebotomine sandflies. The sandflies inject the infective stage (i.e., promastigotes) from their proboscis during blood meals . Promastigotes that reach the puncture wound are phagocytized by macrophages and other types of mononuclear phagocytic cells. Progmastigotes transform in these cells into the tissue stage of the parasite (i.e., amastigotes) , which multiply by simple division (The amastigote form while residing in the cells of the reticuloendothelial system, multiplies by binary fission. Multiplication goes on continuously till the cell becomes packed with parasites. The host cell is thereby enlarged and eventually ruptures) and proceed to infect other mononuclear phagocytic cells . Parasite, host, and other factors affect whether the infection becomes symptomatic and whether cutaneous or visceral leishmaniasis results. Sandflies become infected by ingesting infected cells during blood meals (, ). In sandflies, amastigotes transform into promastigotes, develop in the gut (in the hindgut for leishmanial organisms in the Viannia subgenus; in the midgut for organisms in the Leishmania subgenus), and migrate to the proboscis .