Mohammed Othman Alkurbi¹, Raafat Abdel Moneim Hassanein^1,2* and Mohammed Othman Alkurbi¹

¹Department of Laboratory Medicine, Faculty of Applied Medical Sciences, Umm Al-Qura University, Saudi Arabia
²Department of Zoonoses, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Assiut University, Assiut, Egypt

*Corresponding Author: Raafat Abdel Moneim Hassanein, Department of Laboratory Medicine, Faculty of Applied Medical Sciences, Umm Al-Qura University, Saudi Arabia.

Received: August 08, 2023; Published: August 25, 2023

Abstract

Background: Leishmaniasis is a vector-borne disease caused by different species belonging to the genus Leishmania. Leishmaniasis is endemic in Saudi Arabia with cases reported in many regions. This retrospective study aimed to determine the epidemiological trends of leishmaniasis in the different regions of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) from 2019-2021.

Methods: The analyzed data were based on surveillance and registry database of the Saudi Ministry of Health and included the reported regions, patients’ age groups, gender and the leishmaniasis clinical forms, their annual and month-by-month recorded patterns. Overall, a total of 2763 confirmed cases of cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) were reported in KSA; divided as 1096, 1067 and 600 cases in 2019, 2020 and 2021, respectively. In addition, two visceral leishmaniasis (VL) patients only were reported during 2021G, one case recorded in Saudi patient and another one in non-Saudi.

Results: The highest number of the cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) were from Medina region, western region of KSA (N = 655/2763, 23.7%) from 2019 to 2021; (N = 246/2763, 8.9%) in 2019; (N = 262/2763, 9.48%) in 2020 and (N = 147/2763, 5.32%) in 2021, while the lowest number was reported in Makkah region (N = 1 case in 2019). The cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) were 49.65% Saudis and 50.34% non-Saudi expatriates with a ratio around 1.0: 1.02. The cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) re-categorized in 2020 to 2021G as (1344/1667; 80.62%) males and (323/1667; 19.37%) females with a ratio of 4.0:1.0. In relation to patients’ age group, the majority of the reported cutaneous leishmaniasis cases were in 15-˂45 years (1072/1667; 64.3%) and the lowest number (13/1667; 0.77%) was in age group of <1 year during the period of 2020 to 2021.

Conclusion: Taken together, the present findings indicate the persistency of leishmaniasis endemicity, particularly cutaneous leishmaniasis, in KSA and Medina region is the most affected one. Thus, sustainable monitoring of leishmaniasis and improving its control measures is warranted.

 Keywords: Leishmaniasis; Epidemiological Trends; Saudi Arabia

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Citation

Citation: Raafat Abdel Moneim Hassanein., et al. “Leishmaniasis in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: Epidemiological Trends from 2019 to 2021: A Retrospective Study”.Acta Scientific Medical Sciences 7.9 (2023): 165-174.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2023 Raafat Abdel Moneim Hassanein., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.