BACKGROUND Efficient allocation of resources to intervene against malaria requires a detailed understanding of the contemporary spatial distribution of malaria risk. It is exactly 40 y since the last global map of malaria endemicity was published. This paper describes the generation of a new world map of Plasmodium falciparum malaria endemicity for the year 2007. METHODS AND FINDINGS A total ...

Buruli ulcer or Mycobacterium ulcerans disease occurs mainly in areas in proximity to standing or slowly running freshwater, habitats in which free-living amoebae occur. For this reason, a possible link between the habitat of M. ulcerans and free-living amoebae was investigated. Free-living amoebae and mycobacteria were isolated from water and biofilm specimens taken from protected and unprotec...

The effect of host infection, chronic clinical disease, and transmission intensity on the patterns of specific antibody responses in Bancroftian filariasis was assessed by analyzing specific IgG1, IgG2, IgG3, IgG4, and IgE profiles among adults from two communities with high and low Wuchereria bancrofti endemicity. In the high endemicity community, intensities of the measured antibodies were si...

We reported previously on an area in Japan where over 30% of the inhabitants were positive for hepatitis C virus (HCV) antibody. In the present study, clinical features of hepatitis G virus (HGV) infection in this area of high endemicity were compared to those in an area where HCV is not endemic. A total of 400 individuals were selected randomly from those who were medically screened for liver ...

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Copyright: Ó 2009 Hay et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Background Efficient allocation of resources to in...

Introduction Hepatitis A (HA) is a liver disease with low mortality rate, but it can cause debilitating symptoms and fulminant hepatitis in some cases. Its incidence greater geographical areas poor sanitation hygiene. Spain considered low-endemicity country, so universal childhood immunization against HA currently not financed by the National Health System. The aim of this study was to synthesi...

In South America, a shift has been observed from high to intermediate endemicity for hepatitis A virus (HAV) infection in several countries, including Brazil, which has generally been explained by improvements in public health programs and sanitary conditions in most parts of these areas. A multicentric population-based study conducted in Brazilian capital cities classified the North, Northeast...

The biggest challenge in the serological diagnosis of visceral leishmaniasis (VL) is to find a biomarker with a high specificity. This study was undertaken to identify novel Leishmania donovani antigens to solve the existing problem. The soluble L. donovani promastigote antigen was separated by SDS-PAGE, and a Western blot was probed with pooled sera of five subjects with confirmed VL before (n...

OBJECTIVE: The present field research was aimed at identifying sonographic and hemodynamic findings indicative of the presence of schistosomiasis mansoni in endemic areas. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Doppler sonography was performed in 554 patients with schistosomiasis in three areas with different endemicity levels: low (n = 109), medium (n = 255) and high endemicity (n = 190). The World Health Org...