epidemiological aspects of visceral leishmaniasis in baft district, kerman province, southeast of iran

background : visceral leishmaniasis (kala-azar) is an endemic disease in some areas of iran. a cross- sectional study was conducted for sero-epidemiological survey of visceral leishmaniasis (vl) in baft district from kerman province, southeast of iran. methods: blood samples  were  collected  from children  up to 12 years old and 10% of adult population from baft villages with a multi-stage randomized cluster sampling. in addition, blood samples were collected from 30 domestic dogs from the same areas. all the collected blood sam­ples were tested by direct agglutination test (dat) for the detection of anti- leishmania  antibod­ies in both human and dog using the cut-off value of ≥1:3200 and ≥ 1:320, respectively. parasitologi­cal, molecular, and pathological were performed on infected dogs. chi-square and fisher exact tests were used to compare sero-prevalence values. r esults: from 1476 collected human serum samples, 23 (1.55%) showed anti- leishmania antibod­ies at titers of 1:800 and 1:1600 whereas 14 (0.95%) showed anti- leishmania infantum antibodies at titers of   ≤ 1:3200.  no statistically significant difference was found between male (1.18 %) and female (0.69%) sero-prevalence ( p= 0.330). children of 5-8 years showed the high­est sero-prevalence rate (3.22%).  seven out of 30 domestic dogs (23%) showed anti- leishmania antibodies at titers ≤ 1:320. leishmania infantum was identified in five infected dogs by nested - pcr assay. conclusion: it seems that visceral leishmaniasis is being endemic in southern villages of baft district, southeast of iran.