the efficacy of pcr for early diagnosis and detection of asymptomatic cases of visceral leishmaniasis in human and dog

abstract introduction: this study was conducted to detect asymptomatic cases of visceral leishmaniasis in human and dog, using pcr and serology methods in darab, fars province. material and methods: in this descriptive cross-sectional survey, blood samples were randomly collected from all children aged 10 years old; 10% of the adults and 20% of the dog owners were investigated. to determine the prevalence of infection rate of vl, direct agglutination tests (dat) and pcr-based assays were applied. in addition, to identify the species of the parasite, the species-specific pcr on blood samples was used. results: of the 376 subjects investigated, 355 were children 10 years old and 21 subjects were adults. overall, 5 (1.33%) subjects (2 males and 3 females) were found seropositive; they were aged 2-5 years. of 23 dog samples, one case (4.3%) showed specific leishmania antibodies equal to 1: 320 titer. also, overall, 32 (8.5%) subjects and five dogs (21.7%) were found pcr-positive in the leishmania kdna- specific pcr and l.infantum was detected in all the samples. conclusion: the results showed that pcr on blood with rv1 and rv2 primers is a valuable method for early diagnosis of vl in human and detection of asymptomatic cases especially in endemic regions.