Identification of new antigens for the diagnosis of visceral leishmaniasis: Application in immunochromatography

This thesis focused on one of the most important infectious disease challenges in Latin America: visceral leishmaniasis (VL). In addition to the existing socioeconomic challenges behind this disease, there are also scientific challenges to the successful control of leishmaniasis. The zoological character of this disease, in which dogs are seen as villains, means that control measures are not restricted to humans only. Therefore, this thesis focuses on improving human and especially canine diagnosis of the disease, which is one of the main disease control measures. In this thesis, it is demonstrated that it is possible to improve the performance of human and canine serological diagnosis with the discovery of a new antigen that substantially increased the specificity both in ELISA assays and in immunochromatographic tests.