Leishmania (L.) amazonensis infection impairs reproductive and fetal parameters in female mice

Leishmaniasis is a group of parasitic zoonotic diseases caused by intracellular proto-zoans belonging to the genus Leishmania. Little is known about the effects that this parasitosis may have on the reproductive parameters and pregnancy of infected humans and pets. This study aimed to evaluate the influence of chronic cutaneous leishmaniasis caused by Leishmania (Leishmania) amazonensis on reproductive and fetal parameters using a female murine model. A control group of female BALB/c mice and a group infected with L. (L.) amazonensis were mated with healthy males. Clinical parameters were monitored during the pre-mating and ges-tational periods. Female mice were euthanized on day 19 of gestation, when the fetuses were weighed and their length measured and embryonic resorptions and fetal death were recorded. We observed five fetal deaths and three embryonic resorptions in the infected group. Fur-thermore, there was a decrease in fertility in the infected group (26.32%). The weight of the offspring from infected mothers was lower than that in the control group (1.019 +/- 0.035 g and 1.163 +/- 0.032 g, p < 0.01). Fetal length was reduced in the infected group (3.71 +/- 0.05 cm in the control group and 3.40 +/- 0.06 cm in the infected group p < 0.001). This study shows that cuta-neous leishmaniasis caused by L. (L.) amazonensis impairs reproductive and fetal parameters in mice. (c) 2020 Asociaci acute accent on Argentina de Microbiologi acute accent a. Published by Elsevier Espan tilde a, S.L.U. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).