Molecular Identification of Leishmania Species Isolated from Patients with Cutaneous Leishmaniasis in Pakdasht District, Iran, 2009-2014

Background and Recently, sporadic cases of cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) has been reported in some parts of Pakdasht district, in southeast of Tehran, Iran. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of CL and identification of Leishmania spp in Pakdasht district.
We conducted a cross-sectional study in suspected individuals of CL attending Pakdasht Health Center from March 2009 to November 2014. Diagnosis of disease was made based on direct smear of skin lesions and Giemsa staining. The kinetoplast DNA (kDNA) was then extracted by phenol-chloroform-isoamyl alcohol (PCI) and the species were identified using specific PCR method.
Direct smears identified 57 (59.4%) positive cases (out of 96 suspected subjects). Among the subjects 37 (64.9%) were male and 20 (35.1%) were female. The majority of CL cases (54.4%) were detected in 2012, specially in October and November. The disease was more prevalent in those younger than 10 years of age (30.2%) and less prevalent in individuals aged 10-20 (13.6%). The majority of patients had a history of travel to Sabzevar district as an endemic area in Khorasan Razavi province and most of them were laborer. L.major was the predominant species isolated from all cases.
According to this study, Pakdasht district is not believed to be a CL focus since most cases were affected due to the travelling to the main endemic foci of CL.