Identifying Cutaneous Leishmaniasis Vectors after an Outbreak: Anthropophily of Sergentomyia species and detection of Leishmania major DNA within Sergentomyia ingrami, in Ghana
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Prior to 1999, Ghana was not known to be a Cutaneous Leishmaniasis (CL) endemic country. The outbreak of CL in the Volta Region in 1999 resulted in the need for urgent investigations to understand the disease transmission dynamics. Monthly entomological collections from January 2006 to May 2007 revealed 99.8% (21,980/22,016) of sand flies collected were Sergentomyia and 0.2% (36/22,016) Phlebotomus, the putative vector of CL in the Old World. The density of Phlebotomus was so low, their vectorial role is uncertain. This study was therefore aimed at determining the possible vector species in the outbreak area. We collected sand flies from homes to examine anthropophily, by testing their blood meals. The blood-meal sources of 275 (20.5%) of 1342 collected female sand flies revealed the highest proportion of animal blood source was chicken (33.8%) and goat (12.4%). Humans accounted for 32% of blood meal sources. Identified species included: Sergentomyia africana africana (26.9%), S. ingrami (34.5%) and S. simillima (38.2%), which were found to have single and mixed blood-meals, with S. simillima having the highest proportion that contained human blood (14.6%). Using molecular methods, we examined unfed flies and flies found anthropophilic for the presence of Leishmania major DNA. Poolscreening analysis revealed 3 pools of S. ingrami positive with L. major DNA, with an infection rate of 1.27% (95% confidence interval: 2.467–3.647). This study showed that some Sergentomyia species are anthropophilic, contain L. major DNA, and could be involved in the transmission of CL in Ghana. There is however the need to conclusively validate the role of S. ingrami as a vector of L. major in Ghana, by isolating the parasite and initiating experimental transmission studies.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".