Leishmaniasis is a family of diseases caused by parasites belonging to the genus leishmania. Currently there are estimated to be about 12 million cases worldwide with approximately 2 million new cases each year. Symptoms range from open sores on the skin to swelling of the liver and spleen and eventually death.
Leishmania is an obligate intercellular parasite that attacks macrophages and interferes with their inflammatory response. Therefore, I have created a mathematical model consisting of ordinary differential equations for the leishmania, SHP-1, STAT1, ERK 1/2, and the resulting inflammatory response.
Experimental data was collected for the growth of leishmania up to 48 hours and for the inflammatory response up to 2 hours. Simulations were created which qualitatively agree with those behaviors collected experimentally.