Concurrent visual diagnosis and susceptibility profiling of the first line drug against visceral leishmaniasis by plasmonic detection of PCR amplified genetic biomarker.

Visceral form of leishmaniasis (also known as Kala-azar) is a fatal neglected tropical disease affecting 95 countries worldwide. Recently, substantial proportion of resistance related treatment failure cases have been reported against its first line drug, sodium-antimony gluconate (SAG). We report an easy, fast, sensitive and cheap visual diagnosis and SAG susceptibility profiling for this disease based on recently recognized genetic biomarker and gold nanoparticle based plasmonic detection phenomenon. This is a non-gel, non-culture based detection technique, which can be used as simultaneous high throughput detection and SAG-susceptibility profiling in Leishmania endemic resource stringent countries.