proteins in its maxicircles (~25-50 per parasite), and guide RNA in its minicircles (~10,000 per parasite) of the kinetoplast. With this specific method, one can still detect Leishmania even with a very low parasite load. When needing to diagnose a specific species of Leishmania, as opposed to only detection, other PCR methods have been superior.

Most forms of the disease are transmitted only from nonhuman animals, but some can be spread between humans. Infections in humans are caused by about 21 of 30 species that infect mammals; the