Leptospirosis is recognized as the most widespread zoonosis with a global distribu-tion. In this study, the antigenic variation in Leptospira interrogans and Leptospira borgpetersenii isolated from human urine and field rat kidney was preliminarily confirmed by microscopic agglutination test using monoclonal antibodies, and was further subjected to amplification and identification of outer membrane lipopro-teins with structural gene variation. Sequence similarity analysis revealed that these protein sequences, namely OmpL1, LipL32 and LipL41, showed no more ho-mologies to outer membrane lipoproteins of non-pathogenic Leptospira and other closely related Spirochetes, but showed a strong identity within L. interrogans, suggesting intra-specific phylogenetic lineages that might be originated from a common pathogenic leptospiral origin. Moreover, the ompL1 gene showed more antigenic variation than lipL32 and lipL41 due to less conservation in secondary structural evolution within closely related species. Phylogenetically, ompL1 and lipL41 of these strains gave a considerable proximity to L. weilii and L. santaro-sai. The ompL1 gene of L. interrogans clustered distinctly from other pathogenic and non-pathogenic leptospiral species. The diversity of ompL genes has been an-alyzed and it envisaged that sequence-specific variations at antigenic determinant sites would result in slow evolutionary changes along with new serovar origina-tion within closely related species. Thus, a crucial work on effective recombinant vaccine development and engineered antibodies will hopefully meet to solve the therapeutic challenges.

Some filarial nematodes, such as Wuchereria bancrofti, Brugia malayi, and Brugia timori, cause lymphatic diseases in humans in the tropics, whereas other filarial parasites from wild animals cause zoonotic diseases in humans worldwide. To elucidate the prevalence and diversity of filarial parasites in Malaysia, we investigated the filarial parasites from wild animals in Gemas, Negeri Sembilan. To find adult filarial parasites, we dissected 26 animals, which included five frogs, one skink, one snake, two birds, six common treeshrews, and 11 rats. Then, we examined microfilariae in the blood smears and skin snips obtained from each animal. We found two types of microfilariae in the blood smears of common treeshrews: one was very similar to Malayfilaria sofiani and the other closely resembled Brugia tupaiae. These findings indicate an additional distribution of these filarial parasites in Gemas.