comparison of three methods for diagnosis of cutaneous leishmaniasis

background : leishmaniasis is one of the infectious parasitic diseases of highest incidence in the world. cutaneous leishmaniasis (cl) has long been reported in shiraz, southern iran. there is a need to find a sensitive and specific method for treatment and control of the disease. methods: we have compared the sensitivity of the conventional methods microscopy and cultiva­tion of lesion scrapes against pcr amplification of parasite kinetoplast dna from these sam­ples. the samples (n=219) were obtained from the patients clinically suspected of cl. the smears were stained with giemsa for microscopy and cultured in novy-nicolle-mcneal (nnn) blood agar for promastigote growth. for pcr, the dry smears were scraped off the slides and dna was extracted. results : the positive rates from 219 specimens were 76.71%, 50.68%, and 93.61% for micros­copy, cultivation, and pcr, respectively. the highest correlation was found between pcr and micros­copy method ( p = 0.014). in pcr assay, 95.61%, 3.9%, and 0.49% of the samples were identi­fied as leishmania major , l. tropica , and dermatropic l. infantum , respectively. conclusion: the pcr method appears to be the most sensitive for the diagnosis of cl and is valu­able for identifying the other species of leishmania with confusing dermatropic signs.