molecular identification of leishmania species in an outbreak of re-emerged cutaneous leishmaniasis in southwestern iran during 2015 - 2016

Background: dezful and its suburbs, as the second city in khuzestan province, southwest of iran, has been an endemic area of cutaneous leishmaniasis (cl) with a low incidence rate since the last decades. however, the disease incidence has rapidly increased, and now is considered as a re-emerging parasitic disease in the area.objectives: the aim of this study was to identify the most prevalent cl species in dezful region.methods: a total of 196 microscopically confirmed slides from cl patients referred to dezful health center were randomly collected in the period of 2015 - 2016. after dna extraction from microscopically positive slides, polymerase chain reaction-restriction frag-ment length polymorphism (pcr-rflp) was carried out on 61 eligible specimens using ribosomal internal transcribed spacer 1 (its1) gene. the haeiii restriction enzyme was used for the identification of species.results: samples were randomly collected from 196 acute cl cases, including 110 (56.2%) males and 86 (43.8%) females. most infec-tions were seen in the age range of 2 - 7 years (65/196, 33.1%). totally, 60.1% of the cases had only one lesion, and half of the lesions appeared on hands. furthermore, 162 (82.7%) cases were referred to dezful health center in the cold seasons (autumn and winter). results of pcr-rflp on 61 eligible isolates showed that 60 (98.4%) isolates were leishmania major, and only 1 (1.6%) isolate was leish-mania tropica.conclusions: our findings indicated that l. major is the main agent of re-emerged cl in dezful and its suburbs, and the disease is a zoonosis.