Molecular signature of healing in cutaneous leishmaniasis

The immune response is central to the pathogenesis of cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL). However, most of our current understanding of the immune response in human CL derives from the analysis of systemic responses, which only partially reflect what occurs on the skin. Here, we characterized the clinical and transcriptional dynamics of skin lesions during the course of treatment of CL patients, and identified gene signatures and pathways associated with healing and non-healing responses. We performed a comparative transcriptomic profiling of serial skin lesion biopsies obtained before, in the middle and at the end of treatment from 12 CL patients: 5 who cured and 7 who had treatment failure.