Improving Leishmania species identification in different types of samples from cutaneous lesions.

The discrimination of Leishmania species from patient samples has epidemiological and clinical relevance. In this study, different gene target PCR-restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) protocols were evaluated for their robustness as Leishmania species discriminators in 61 patients with cutaneous leishmaniasis. We modified the hsp70-PCR-RFLP protocol and found it to be the most reliable protocol for species identification.