Direct Leishmania species typing in Old World clinical samples: Evaluation of 3 sensitive methods based on the heat-shock protein 70 gene

Ana M. Montalvo, Jorge Fraga, Sayda El Safi, Marina Gramiccia, Charles L. Jaffe, Jean Claude Dujardin, Gert Van der Auwera*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

20 Scopus citations

Abstract

In the diagnosis of leishmaniasis, identification of the causative Leishmania species is relevant for treatment, prognosis, and epidemiology. Three new hsp70-based PCR variants were developed and recently validated on clinical samples from Peru, without the need for culturing. We evaluated their performance on 133 clinical samples (bone marrow, blood, buffy coat, lymph node aspirates, lesion biopsies) from 42 cutaneous and 56 visceral leishmaniasis patients and 35 negative cases, all from Old World countries (Italy, Sudan, Israel, and Tunisia). The 3 new PCRs were significantly more sensitive than those previously described for hsp70, and their respective restriction fragment analyses were more efficient for species identification. In 79% of the parasitologically confirmed positive samples, the species could be identified directly from sample DNA. This evaluation demonstrated that these new tools are globally applicable in different geographical, clinical, and sampling contexts, and they could become the reference method for identification of Leishmania species in clinical specimens.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)35-39
Number of pages5
JournalDiagnostic Microbiology and Infectious Disease
Volume80
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - 2014

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 Elsevier Inc.

Keywords

  • Clinical sample
  • Direct PCR
  • Hsp70
  • Leishmania
  • Species identification
  • Typing

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