REVIEW article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Antimicrobials, Resistance and Chemotherapy
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvancing Treatments for Protozoan Diseases: From Resistance Mechanisms to Novel TherapiesView all 13 articles
Cutaneous Leishmaniasis: Epidemiology, Treatment Access and Translational Challenges of Topical Therapies
Provisionally accepted
- 1Medical Research Institute Mercedes and Martín Ferreyra (INIMEC), Córdoba, Argentina
- 2National University of Cordoba, Córdoba, Córdoba, Argentina
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Leishmaniasis is an orphan, vector-borne parasitic disease endemic in more than 90 countries. It displays different clinical manifestations, being the cutaneous form (CL) the most common. This presents as skin ulcers that produce significant psychosocial distress, lifelong scarring and stigmatization. Historically endemic in low-income regions in the tropics, epidemiological data and computational models forecast the continued expansion into regions further away from the Equator, both northwards and southwards. Treatments for CL are unsatisfactory and are currently the major unmet medical need for the leishmaniases. An inherent difficulty with using the available systemic drugs is that they are highly toxic and painful to administer and require second-level hospital infrastructure to manage side effects. In this context, local treatments, and in particular topical treatments for CL are particularly interesting due to their potential to be efficacious and less toxic, painful and inconvenient than systemic treatments. They could improve patient compliance and allow self-treatment, diminishing associated financial costs both for the patients and for the states that usually provide the treatments. In this work we discuss epidemiology of the disease and availability of treatments and then center on topical treatments, covering advances in preclinical and clinical studies.
Keywords: cutaneous leishmaniasis, availability, Topical treatments, Neglected tropical disease, clinical trials
Received: 05 Mar 2025; Accepted: 24 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Carrer, Papera and Ríos. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Dolores C. Carrer, dolorescarrer@immf.uncor.edu
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