Determination of Leishmania species causing cutaneous leishmaniasis in Mashhad by PCR-RFLP method

Abstract

Three species of L. tropica, L. major and L. infantum are known as main causal agents of leishmaniasis have been reported in Iran. Since cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) is endemic in North East of Iran, in the present work, 50 Leishmania positive isolates from human cases in Mashhad (Center of Razavi province, North East of Iran), were genotyped by means of polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis (PCR-RFLP) of the mini-exon gene. Our results showed that the Leishmania tropica was more prevalent in Mashhad where among 50 isolates, 17 were detected Leishmania major (34%) and 38 samples were Leishmania tropica (66%).