What is it about?
Canine visceral leishmaniasis is a relevant public animal health problem and a huge challenge for human health in the Americas. Approximately 3.5 thousand cases of human visceral leishmaniasis and 300 hundred human deaths are annually reported, just in Brazil. This is a review on serological diagnostic tests to detect canine visceral leishmaniasis in the Americas. We systematically revised scientific evidences on accuracy of serological tests to evaluate their quality and assure sensitivity, specificity and positive and negative likelihood ratios of the currently available tests.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
Most of the currently available tests are used as routine diagnostic procedures without a precise estimation of their accuracy affecting the decision-making process linked to a positive or negative result. We offer in this paper the summary accuracy measures for most of the tests used in the Americas, mainly in Brazil.
Perspectives
This paper will be useful as a reference to further development of serological tests for canine visceral leishmaniasis. Based in our results, basic researchers will have an input for the development of new tests surpassing the limitations pointed out in our discussion.
Gustavo Romero
Universidade de Brasilia
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Serological diagnosis of canine visceral leishmaniasis in Brazil: systematic review and meta-analysis, Tropical Medicine & International Health, December 2014, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1111/tmi.12429.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
