in vivo efficacy of gum obtained pistacia atlantica in experimental treatment of cutaneous leishmaniasis

background: recent circumstantial evidences are suggesting that an increasing number of iranian patients with cu­taneous leishmaniasis are unresponsive to meglumine antimoniate (glucantime®). pistacia atlantica is native plant in iran (central, western, and eastern regions). gum obtained pistacia atlantica has been reported to possess consid­erable in vitro antimicrobial activity. in this study, we aimed to investigate antileishmanial activity of p. atlantica . methods : male balb/c mice were inoculated subcutaneously 2×10 6 l. major promastigotes (mhrom/ir/75/er) at the base of tail in 2007. mice were randomly divided into 3 groups. in group 1 glucantime® was administered to the  balb/c mice in regimen of 60 mg per kg of body weight for 28 days by intraperitoneal injections per day, in group 2 the gum of p. atlantica var . kurdica were tested by rubbing of local lesions for 28 days, group 3 infected but non-treated. comparisons of treated groups and untreated group were done by two-way analysis of variance (anova).   results : topically rubbing administration of gum obtained p. atlantica var. kurdica daily for 28 days like glucan­time® decreased skin lesion size in the balb/c mice infected with l.major compared with that in the control ( p < 0.01). treatment balb/c mice with gum obtained p. atlantica var. kurdica and glucantime® causes decrease num­ber of parasitologicaly positive mice ( p < 0.05). conclusion : our results show that gum obtained p. atlantica var. kurdica can be used for controlling cutaneous leishmaniasis caused by l.major and inhibiting development of cutaneous leishmaniasis lesions