LeishMan – Surveillance of imported leishmaniasis with regard to diagnostic and therapeutic procedures
Background
Imported cases of leishmaniasis have become more frequent in Europe over the past years due to increased travel to risk areas. Standardized species identification and treatment protocols are warranted to provide the patients with the best possible treatment. The broad availability of PCR allows a rapid determination of species. Each species has a different sensibility to the different antileishmanial drugs. Therefore a species specific treatment approach has been evaluated for many species and is widely applied in many centres recently. As the Leishmania species influences the outcome of systemic treatment parasite species identification is of high clinical relevance. In particular in the setting of travel clinics, where the origin of an infection often cannot be assigned to a specific location, more sophisticated species identification than just the geographical one is required.
Organization
The consortium so far consists of 17 participants from 12 institutions from 7 European countries (UK: 3 partner institutions; France: 3 partner institutions; Belgium: 1 partner institution; Germany: 2 partner institutions; Netherlands: 1 partner institution; Switzerland: 1 partner institution; Spain: 1 partner institution).
Any queries regarding the network, or requests to become a member, should be directed to the steering committee: