Loop-Mediated Isothermal Amplification Allows Rapid, Simple and Accurate Molecular Diagnosis of Human Cutaneous and Visceral Leishmaniasis Caused by When Compared to PCR.

Loop-mediated isothermal amplification allows the rapid, sensitive and specific amplification of DNA without complex and expensive equipment. We compared the diagnostic performance of Loopamp™ Detection Kit (Eiken Chemical Co., Ltd., Tokyo, Japan) with conventional and real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for human cutaneous and visceral leishmaniasis caused by . A total of 230 DNA samples from cutaneous (CL) and visceral (VL) leishmaniasis cases and controls from Spain, characterized by nested PCR (LnPCR) were tested by: (i) the Loopamp™ Detection Kit (Loopamp), run on Genie III real-time fluorimeter (OptiGene, UK); and (ii) real-time quantitative PCR (qPCR). The Loopamp test returned 98.8% (95% confidence interval-CI: 96.0-100.00) sensitivity and specificity of 97.7% (95% CI: 92.2-100) on VL samples, and 100% (95% CI: 99.1-100) sensitivity and 100.0% (95% CI: 98.8-100.0) specificity on CL samples. The Loopamp time-to-positivity () obtained by real-time fluorimetry showed excellent concordance (C = 97.91%) and strong correlation (r = 0.799) with qPCR's cycle threshold (). The performance of Loopamp is comparable to that of LnPCR and qPCR in the diagnosis of cutaneous and visceral leishmaniasis due to . The excellent correlation between the and should be further investigated to determine the accuracy of Loopamp to quantify parasite load in tissues.