A historical perspective on the immunodiagnosis of schistosomiasis in China

The investigation and application of immunodiagnosis in schistomiasis have had a history of about 50 years so far in China. The author, in this paper, briefly review the progress of the technology involved here in the country, putting the stress on the latest issues during last decade. Also showed some limits in the use for control program of the disease through summary of some collaborative studies with the attempt in identifying guidelines for the implementation of serology in schistosomiasis immunodiagnosis. In addition, it was pointed out that a seroepidentiological approach in the identification of target individuals for treatment or re-treatment may be realistic and practical, which emphasized that the immunodiagnostic approach for public health use could ignore individual identification of the real infections. In this way, it became possible to bypass the complexity of interpreting the seroreactivity of an individual in assigning him/her with qualitative testing to the normal or infected person. Instead, one needs only to divide individuals in a community into 'normal' or 'infected' groups according to the titer distribution, which leads to identifying target groups for treatment. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.