title: A preface on advances in diagnostics for infectious and parasitic diseases: detecting parasites of medical and veterinary importance.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Parasitology,Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine,Liverpool L3 5QA,UK.
authors.forename: J Russell
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Stothard
authors.affiliation: Department of Parasitology,Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine,Liverpool L3 5QA,UK.
authors.forename: Emily
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Adams
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003141:Communicable Diseases; D006801:Humans; D010271:Parasites / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D010272:Parasitic Diseases / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000469:parasitology; D010273:Parasitic Diseases, Animal / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000469:parasitology; D011634:Public Health