Host-protective immunity and its suppression in a parasitic disease: murine cutaneous leishmaniasis.

The accumulation of knowledge on the cellular immunology of host parasite relationships can be very rapid when infection of mice with a human parasite causes a disease resembling that seen in man. This is so of Old World cutaneous leishmaniasis ('oriental sore'). As must be the case in all chronic infectious diseases, manifestations of the clinical disease spectrum in cutaneous leishmaniosis reflect both host and parasite factors. In this article Graham Mitchell describes how this spectrum can be exploited in inbred mice injected with isolates of Leishmania trop ica major (L. major) for detailed analysis of interactions between host and parasite.