Leishmaniasis. What do we know about its chemotherapy?

Leishmaniasis is a protozoan disease that remains without suitable chemotherapeutic options. The present status of clinical therapy is almost the same as thirty years ago. The disease world situation is becoming worst, mainly due to man invasion of wild areas, poverty, civil and military movements and co-infection, specially with HIV. Many compounds have been tested as potential antileishmanial drugs and our objective is to summarize the options for the treatment, presenting some of the newly discovered compounds being tested, with commentsabout the most promising. Clinical usual and unusual aspects, diagnosis methods and concomitant AIDS are briefly discussed and some words are dedicated to new biochemical approaches...