Combination Therapy for the Treatment of Cutaneous Leishmaniasis Compared with Standard Drugs, In Vitro or In Vivo: A Systematic Review

The obligate intracellular parasite, Leishmania, causes leishmaniasis as an infectious disease. The parasite is transmitted through female sandfly bites and infects the host mononuclear phagocytes, leading to severe skin lesions and fatal systemic infection. The quick diagnosis and effective treatment can prevent the development scars and chronic or uncontrollable disease forms. The current chemical and physical treatments have limitations; hence, the use of plant compounds and their derivatives is a new proposed treatment method. Therefore, in this review, the recent advances in combination therapy of cutaneous leishmaniasis were investigated. The information was obtained from all articles published in PubMed, SciELO, ScienceDirect, Scopus, Google Scholar, and Web of Science databases (1998–2022). Search terms used were “Combination Therapy” AND “Cutaneous Leishmaniasis.” The data showed increased synergistic efficacy or shortening the course of treatment and few adverse effects in the combined treatment of (CL), in vitro and in vivo . Expanding the combination therapy in clinical trials could open a new insight in treatment strategies of CL.