"Developing, validating and standardising methodologies for the use of PCR and PCR-ELISA in the diagnosis and monitoring of control and eradication programmes for trypanosomosis”

During the past years, species specific PCR's for identifying the different taxa within the Trypanozoon subgenus have been developed by our laboratory. For the detection of the two human pathogenic trypanosomes, PCR-SRA for T. b. rhodesiense (Radwanska et al., 2002) and PCR-TgsGP gene for T. b. gambiense (Radwanska et al., 2002) exist now. For animal trypanosomiasis, a T. evansi specific PCR based on the RoTat 1.2 VSG was developed (Claes et al., submitted). Only for T. b. brucei and T. equiperdum, no specific markers could be identified. However, the results do point out that T. equiperdum is more closely related to T. b. brucei than to T. evansi and even might be a particular strain of T. b. brucei (Claes et al., in press). * Corresponding author: Filip Claes, Prince Leopold Institute of Tropical Medicine, Department of Parasitology, Nationalestraat 155, B-2000 Antwerpen, Belgium. Tel: +32 3 247 63 69; Fax: +32 3 247 63 73; email: [email protected]