comparison of serological methods (elisa, dat and ifa) for diagnosis of visceral leishmaniasis utilizing an endemic strain

background: the causative agent of visceral leishmaniasis (vl) in iran is leishmania infantum (l. infantum) (mediterranean type) and its major reservoir host is the dog. ob-jective: to compare the serological methods including direct agglutination test (dat), indirect immunofluorescent-antibody test (ifa) and enzyme-linked immunosorbent as-say (elisa) for serodiagnosis of endemic strain of l. infantum. methods: 61 blood samples from vl patients referred to shiraz hospitals and 49 blood samples from con-trol group were collected. native strain of the parasite isolated from a vl patient from the region was cultured and characterized. antigens from this l. infantum parasite were used in elisa and ifa system. results: anti-leishmania antibody was detected in 43 (70.5%), 49 (80.3%) and 51(83.6%) cases using dat, ifa and elisa, respectively. based on these results, sensitivity and specificity of dat was found to be 70.5% and 100%, respectively. sensitivities of ifa and elisa in diagnosis of vl were 80.3% and 83.6% and their specificity was 90.5%. conclusion: results of this study showed that dat and elisa have the highest specificity and sensitivity in diagnosis of vl. dat is a simple, cost-effective and field applicable test. thus, it can be recommended for early and accurate diagnosis of vl, especially in regions where malaria, brucellosis and tu-berculosis are prevalent.