Seroepidemiological survey of human visceral leishmaniasis and canine visceral leishmaniasis in Dehloran district, Ilam province in 2014

Leishmaniasis is an important parasitic disease in the world. We performed a seroepidemiological study of visceral leishmaniasis (VL) in Dehloran district, Ilam province to determine the seroprevalence of infection among humans and dogs using Direct Agglutination Test (DAT).
In this descriptive analytic study, Sera were collected by a multi-stage randomized cluster sampling from 872 children ≤12 years and 52 dogs in 10 villages from four geographical areas in 2014. Direct Agglutination Test (DAT) was done for all samples after serum separation of blood in the leishmaniasis laboratory from the School of Public Health, Tehran University of Medical Sciences.
In all, of 872 human, 9 samples were shown anti-Leishmania antibody with titers ≥ 1/1600 and 11 samples with titers ≥ 1/800. Of 52 dog samples, 11 dog samples with titers ≥ 1/320 as cut-off values of DAT and 13 with titers 1/80 and 1/160.
None of collected human blood samples showed anti Leishmania infantum
antibodies at titers 1:320 as well as None of the dogs had clinical signs. This indicates that asymptomatic dogs also like symptomatic dogs, able to transmit infection and play an active role in the circulation of Leishmania infantum. This study confirms the circulation of L. infantum at least among dogs. We reommended that investigate vectors and wild canines as reservoir hosts of VL in the studied areas.