Biochemical characterization and discrimination of Leishmania major parasites and infected macrophages with Raman spectroscopy and chemometrics

Leishmaniasis is classified as one of the neglected tropical disease (NTD), which are caused by a group of parasitic protozoans called Leishmania. The high case load and severity of the disease make Leishmaniasis second only to malaria in terms of both severity and infectivity. However, due to the low economic interest in research and development, it may become a major world-wide health threat. Current diagnostics including serological assessment of infected tissue by either light microscopy, or antibody tests or by the culturing of potential infection via in vitro or in vivo animal inoculation, parasitological tests using samples aspirated from the spleen and bone marrow, Immunological tests such as the Montenegro test, Fluorescence assays, and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) techniques are suffer from several limitations including time and expense. Herein, we first apply Raman microscopy to distinguish the two L. Major parasitic forms namely promastigotes and amastigotes and secondly, distinguish infected from non-infected macrophages using multivariate data analysis including Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and unsupervised hierarchical cluster imaging analysis (UHCA). The maximum variance between infected and uninfected macrophage groups are visible in the lipid region (92.20 %) as compared to the fingerprint region (46.13 %) along PC1. The contributions from nucleic acids can be found at 805 cm⁻¹ (phosphodiester - Z-marker), 767 cm⁻¹ (pyrimidine ring breathing mode), 742 cm⁻¹ (ring breathing mode of DNA/RNA bases), and 568 cm⁻¹ (cytosine/guanine). These amplified nucleic acid signals in infected macrophages indicate the presence of infection compared to the uninfected macrophage group. Similarly, the maximum variance between amastigotes and promastigotes groups are observed in the lipid region (88.45%) as compared to the fingerprint region (28.34 %). Moreover, the UHCA of infected macrophages revealed the accumulation of lipid bodies or droplets inside or close proximity parasitophorous vacuole, which is consistent with the reported literature. Once established macrophages were infected with Leishmania in vitro and the differences between infected and non-infected established with high reproducibility. The reported spectral differences between infected and non-infected macrophages lays the ground work for developing a diagnostic tool for detection of leishmaniasis in a buffy coat preparation and also offers the potential of monitoring the effects of new therapeutics.