Polymerase chain reaction as a diagnostic tool for detecting Leishmania

Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) has been used to identify a Leishmania parasite in a cutaneous ulcer from a 27-year-old patient infected during travel in Peru. The available classical diagnostic methods could not confirm the diagnosis in a sufficiently short time. Therefore, two sets of oligonucleotides were designed and with both of them fragments of the expected size were obtained. The sequence of the fragment derived from kinetoplast DNA corresponds to the Leishmania Viannia complex. Polymerase chain reaction has advantages over classical diagnostic methods, which makes it an important technique in those hospitals and clinical laboratories in Europe which lack standard diagnostic tests for Leishmania.