Non-invasive diagnosis of cutaneous leishmaniasis by the direct boil loop-mediated isothermal amplification method and MinION™ nanopore sequencing

Cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) is gaining attention as a public health problem. We present two cases of CL imported from Syria and Venezuela in Japan. We diagnosed them as CL non-invasively by the direct boil loop-mediated isothermal amplification method and an innovative sequencing method using the MinION™ sequencer. This report demonstrates that our procedure could be useful for the diagnosis of CL in both clinical and epidemiological settings.

Authors: Kazuo Imai, Norihito Tarumoto, Kiyoko Amo, Makoto Takahashi, Naoya Sakamoto, Atsushi Kosaka, Yasuyuki Kato, Kei Mikita, Jun Sakai, Takashi Murakami, Yutaka Suzuki, Shigefumi Maesaki, Takuya Maeda