Infection with promastigotes (leptomonads) of Leishmania tropica and of L. major inoculated into the skin by the bite of an infected sandfly, Phlebotomus (commonly P. papatasi); it is endemic in parts of the Middle East, northern Africa, and India. The ulcer begins as a papule that enlarges to a nodule and then breaks down into an ulcer. Two distinctive clinical and epidemiologic diseases are recognized, the more common and widespread zoonotic rural disease with a moist acute form, caused by L. major, with reservoir rodent hosts, and an urban, anthroponotic, dry, chronic form of leishmaniasis caused by L. tropica, without a reservoir host, and now largely controlled.
See:
zoonotic cutaneous leishmaniasis Synonym(s):
Old World leishmaniasis,
tropical sore.