| ABSTRACT Visceral leishmaniasis is a serious and debilitating infection with high fatality rate in tropical and subtropical countries. As clinical symptoms of visceral leishmaniasis are not so specific, confirmatory diagnostic methods with high sensitivity and specificity are needed. Noninvasive methods have been developed using urine as a clinical sample for visceral leishmaniasis diagnosis. In fact, there is a clear correlation between kidney impairment and Leishmania DNA in urine. However, it has been proved that Leishmania nucleic acid may also be isolated from patients without any sign of renal involvement. Even though urine has become a promissing biological sample, it is still not widely used due to several issues, such as (i) incomprehension of the... |
