Diagnosis and Characterization of Leishmania Species in Giemsa-Stained Slides By Pcr-Rflp

Background: direct identification of leishmania species in giemsa-stained slides without parasite culturing in the areaswhere multiple species exist, is very helpful. this study was designed to isolate leishmani spp. from giemsa-stained smearsand to characterize them by pcr technique.methods: a total of 48 giemsa-stained slides from confirmed cases of leishmaniasis were examined under a light microscopeat×1000 and classified based on grading of leishmania parasites. dna from each slide was extracted separately andsubjected to pcr. the ribosomal internal transcribed spacer 1 (its1) was amplified with specific primers and the pcrproducts were digested with a restriction enzyme (haeiii).results: of the 48 microscopy-positive slides, 43(89.6%) were positive by pcr-rflp and leishmania species were identified.a statistically significant difference was observed between the both methods (p< 0.05) and also a concordance wasfound between microscopy and pcr-rflp (k= 0.55).conclusion: pcr-rflp seems to be an effective method to identify leishmania species from giemsa-stained smears whichhave been collected from both infected humans and animal reservoir hosts in iran.