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A preface on advances in diagnostics for infectious and parasitic diseases: detecting parasites of medical and veterinary importance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 November 2014

J. RUSSELL STOTHARD  and
EMILY ADAMS
J. RUSSELL STOTHARD*
Affiliation:
Department of Parasitology, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Liverpool L3 5QA, UK
EMILY ADAMS
Affiliation:
Department of Parasitology, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Liverpool L3 5QA, UK
*
*Corresponding author: Department of Parasitology, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Liverpool L3 5QA, UK. E-mail: russell.stothard@lstmed.ac.uk
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Summary

There are many reasons why detection of parasites of medical and veterinary importance is vital and where novel diagnostic and surveillance tools are required. From a medical perspective alone, these originate from a desire for better clinical management and rational use of medications. Diagnosis can be at the individual-level, at close to patient settings in testing a clinical suspicion or at the community-level, perhaps in front of a computer screen, in classification of endemic areas and devising appropriate control interventions. Thus diagnostics for parasitic diseases has a broad remit as parasites are not only tied with their definitive hosts but also in some cases with their vectors/intermediate hosts. Application of current diagnostic tools and decision algorithms in sustaining control programmes, or in elimination settings, can be problematic and even ill-fitting. For example in resource-limited settings, are current diagnostic tools sufficiently robust for operational use at scale or are they confounded by on-the-ground realities; are the diagnostic algorithms underlying public health interventions always understood and well-received within communities which are targeted for control? Within this Special Issue (SI) covering a variety of diseases and diagnostic settings some answers are forthcoming. An important theme, however, throughout the SI is to acknowledge that cross-talk and continuous feedback between development and application of diagnostic tests is crucial if they are to be used effectively and appropriately.

Keywords

point-of-contactmicroscopyrapid diagnostic testqPCRLAMPASSURED
Type
Special Issue Article
Information
Parasitology , Volume 141 , Issue 14: Symposia of the British Society for Parasitology Volume 52 Advances in diagnostics for parasitic diseases , December 2014 , pp. 1781 - 1788
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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