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Background&Objective: Leptospirosis is most widespread Zoonosis in the world and is more prevalent in tropical and temperate regions. In most of Iran, climatologic and ecological conditions are unfavorable for leptospirosis to play an important role as a public health problem. However this does not count for the neglected flat area of Guilan province which presumably represents a region with a high incidence of human leptospirosis. This area has a subtropical climate with mainly farmers as inhabitants. By far the most important agricultural activity is rice farming. Most of farmers used to keep domestic animals in their houses and rodents are abundant. Materials&Methods: To find evidence for a high incidence of leptospirosis in the Guilan province, we collected blood samples from patients who attended one of the three big general hospitals in the province with clinical symptoms consistent with leptospirosis in 2003. All sera were stored at –20c until examination by ELISA and MAT. All patients whose serum had titers ≥160 against at least a pathogenic serovar in MAT and had titer ≥ 1:160 in IgM-ELISA were regarded as confirmed positive cases (70 from 282) and their demographic and epidemiological data were analyzed. Results: Results from our study demonstrate that leptospirosis is mainly a disease of predominantly males (62.5%), occurring in high incidence in villagers (89.5%) during the warm season (100%) notably in September that is time of harvesting (42.90%). Conclusion: In addition it is an occupational disease affecting rice about 90% field workers.

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Background&Objective: Leptospirosis is one of the most common zoonosis in the world,fatality rate of the disease is sometimes high in endemic regions and is transmitted through direct or indirect contact with urine of animals that are carrier of leptospirosis. We studied incidence of leptospirosis in Golestan province in 2004. Materials&Methods: According to coordination with province health center, 20 suspicious patients for leptospirosis were diagnosed by general practioners and referred to 5th Azar hospital. Patients with at least 4 constitutional symptoms (fever, sever headache, conjunctival suffusion, myalgia, arthralgia, icter, malaise) and history of working ir rice farm, exposure to wild or domestic animals or stagnant water were included and MAT for leptospirosis were requested. other causes were ruled out with wright, widal, VDRL, peripheral blood smear. Results: Out of 20 suspicious patients, 12 cases reported. All of them were farmer, had titer>1/100 in MAT. Fever chills, headache were found in nearly all of them. Conjunctival suffusion and increased CPK up to 2 fold than normal was seen in %75 and %66.4 respectively. They were treated by ampicillin or amoxicillin sussessfully. Conclusion: According to the results of this study we suggest to all physician of the area to be concentrated to the disease as an occupational disease in rice farmers. So early diagnosis can prevent many complications of the disease in this group of farmers.

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Background and Objective: Leptospirosis is a worldwide zoonosis that is more common in tropical and semitropical regions and in flat area of Guilan province, nothern Iran, caused by pathogenic leptospires.Serotyping by MAT is complicated, expensive and time cosuming. Molecular typing can be useful alternative. This study was performed to identify the typing of endemic pathogenic leptospires, isolated in Guilan province, by PCR-RFLP. Materials and Methods: In this discriptive study, specimens were taken from patients in Razi hospital, Rasht, Iran ,from April to August 2008. DNA of all positive cultures were extracted by Phenol-Chloroform method. PCR was performed by using two primer sets: B64-I, B64-II for Kirschnery serovars whose PCR product were digested by HinfI for RFLP, and G1,G2 for all other species whose PCR products were digested by DdeI. Band profiles of digested PCR products were compared to band profiles of standard servers to determine species and subspecies. Results: 65 of totally 107 blood cultures were positive. 56 Samples were amplified by G1, G2 included Interrogans and Borgpeterseni and 9 samples were amplified by B64-I, B64-II including Kirschneri species. Conclusion: This study showed that the majority of leptospires species are Interrogans and Borgpeterseni. Regarding to several existing problems in Seortyping of leptospires by MAT, PCR-RFLP can be useful for identifying isolating and studying the serovars in different certain species. It seems that PCR-RFLP can be performable for clinical samples for both early diagnosis and characterization.

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Background and Objective: Leptospirosis is an infectious and zoonosis disease, which is caused by leptospira and is transmitted from animal to human. The rapid diagnosis can control the disease, therefore this study was carried out to determine the prevalent serovars of leptospira using micro agglutination test (MAT) in human and cattles. Method: In this descriptive study, 175 cattles and 67 suspected human serum samples were tested in five provinces in Iran during 2011-12. Serum samples tested by micro agglutination test using 20 live leptospira serogroup. Results: Ninty nine out of 175 (56.5%) cattle serum samples and 31 out of 67 (46.2%) human samples were positive against leptospira antigen. The most prevalent leptospira serovar in cattles and human were Serjoe hardjo (61.9%) and Serjoe serjoe (23%), respectively. The most frequent titer in positive samples was equal to be 1/400. Fifty percent of human positive samples belong to farmers between 20-40 years old. The common contaminations belong to polluted water (61.1%) and infected blood (28.3%), respectively. Conclusion: Using micro agglutination test, the most prevalent leptospira serovar in cattles was Serjoe hardjo and in human was Serjoe serjoe.