clinical features and laboratory findings of visceral leishmaniasis in children referred to children medical center hospital, tehran, iran during 2004-2011.

background: visceral leishmaniasis (vl) is one of the most important parasitic diseases endemic in northwestern and southern areas of iran. the aim of the pre-sent study was to review the records of children hospitalized with vl in order to characterize the clinical features of children as well as laboratory finding in chil-dren medical center hospital, tehran, iran. methods: the medical records of all children with a final diagnosis of vl were reviewed from 2004 to 2011. demographic, clinical information, laboratory find-ing and treatment were considered. results: a total number of 34 children with confirmed vl through 2004-2011 were included in the study. the most prevalent sign and symptoms were fever (97.1%), pallor and weakness (97.1%), appetite loss (61.8%), splenomegaly (97.1%) and hepatomegaly (88.2%). the most frequent laboratory abnormalities were hematological including anemia (97.1%), thrombocytopenia (91.2%) and leukopenia (67.6%). direct agglutination test ( dat) was performed in 23 cases and all of them showed anti- leishmania antibodies with titers of ≥ 1: 3200. in addition, 90% of patients had positive rk39 results. identification of leishmania in the aspirates of the bone marrow was found in 83.3% of patients. conclusion: regional surveillance system in order to monitoring of leishmania-sis trends as well as detection of new emerging foci is recommended.