Evaluation of PCR procedures for detecting and quantifying Leishmania donovani DNA in large numbers of dried human blood samples from a visceral leishmaniasis focus in Northern Ethiopia

Abstract

Although qRT-kDNA PCR is a highly sensitive test, the dependability of low positives remains questionable. It is crucial to correlate between PCR parasitemia and infectivity to sand flies. While optimal sensitivity is achieved by targeting k-DNA, it is important to validate the causative species of VL by DNA sequencing.