Chagas' disease (American trypanosomiasis) is endemic in nearly all Central and South American countries facing the Caribbean basin. Since 1960, reports from the islands of Aruba, Curaçao, Jamaica, and Trinidad have confirmed the presence of Trypanosoma cruzi, blood-sucking triatomine bugs, and wild animals infected with the parasite. It was also established that T. cruzi, triatomine bugs, infe...

Antibiotic resistance consists of a dynamic web. In this review, we describe the path by which different antibiotic residues and antibiotic resistance genes disseminate among relevant reservoirs (human, animal, and environmental settings), evaluating how these events contribute to the current scenario of antibiotic resistance. The relationship between the spread of resistance and the contributi...

Hantaviruses cause two severe human diseases: hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS) and hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS). Various rodent species act as animal reservoirs for hantavirus. In Japan, urban rat- (Rattus norvegicus) and laboratory rat-derived human infections were reported during the 1960s and 1970s-1984, respectively. Although no human cases of infection have been reported...

The most important animal reservoirs of Schistosoma japonicum in China are bovines. Diagnosis and control of bovine schistosomiasis is critical for reducing the prevalence of the disease. We screened defined diagnostic antigens that have the potential to increase the sensitivity and specificity of serological assays and to distinguish between active and prior infections. Five recombinant protei...

The publication of studies using next generation sequencing to analyse large numbers of bacterial isolates from global epidemics is transforming microbiology, epidemiology and public health. The emergence of multidrug resistant Salmonella Typhimurium ST313 is one example. While the epidemiology in Africa appears to be human-to-human spread and the association with invasive disease almost absolu...

Upon infection, Trypanosoma cruzi triggers a strong immune response that has both protective and pathological consequences. In this work, several important questions regarding protective immunity are reviewed. Emphasis is placed on recent studies of the important protective role of CD8+ T cells and on previous studies of immunisation of domestic T. cruzi reservoirs that sought to address practi...

The emergence of viruses such as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus and Nipah virus has underscored the role of animal reservoirs in human disease and the need for reservoir surveillance. Here, we used a panviral DNA microarray to investigate the death of a captive beluga whale in an aquatic park. A highly divergent coronavirus, tentatively named coronavirus SW1, was identified in li...

The advent of new technology for geographical representation and spatial analysis of databases from different sectors offers a new approach to planning and managing the control of tropical diseases. This article reviews the geographical and intersectoral aspects of the epidemiology and control of African trypanosomiasis, cutaneous and visceral leishmaniasis, Chagas disease, schistosomiasis, and...

We estimated the seroprevalence and determined the frequency of acute infections with Neorickettsia sennetsu, spotted fever group rickettsiae, Rickettsia typhi, and Orientia tsutsugamushi among 2,225 febrile patients presenting to community hospitals in three rural Thailand provinces during 2002-2005. The seroprevalence was 0.2% for sennetsu neorickettsiosis (SN), 0.8% for spotted fever group (...

The recently emerged Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) emerged in the Middle East region in 2012. The virus is phylogenetically related to bat CoV, but other animal species like camels and goats may potentially act as an intermediate host by spreading the virus to humans. This virus is thought to cause a severe disease in patients with underlying comorbidities. Laboratory ...