Application of quantitative methods to the study of leishmaniasis epidemiology has allowed Dye (1992) to pinpoint important biological parameters which, if they could be accurately measured in the field, would contribute most to our knowledge of the spread of disease and key targets for control. Three areas in which laboratory-based research could impact most on leishmaniasis epidemiology were highlighted by Dye (1992): (i) the development of accurate diagnostic tools which can distinguish between current and past infection; (ii) to determine the underlying molecular/genetic basis to virulence polymorphisms in the parasite and study these in the context of field epidemiological studies; and (iii) to provide the molecular tools to measure genetic variation in resistance to infection in humans and in reservoir hosts of disease. This paper describes current progress in attaining these goals, highlighting first the work on isolation and field application of genomic and kDNA probes for species-specific diagnosis, and the development of PCR-based assays which can be performed under field conditions. At a more preliminary stage, studies are described in which variability in the major molecular determinants of virulence (lipophosphoglycan, GP63, and members of the HSP70 family of stress proteins) identified through studies of laboratory models of infection, is being measured in primary field isolates of Leishmania peruviana. To complete the picture, current progress in identifying and cloning the genes which control host resistance to leishmanial infection is described, along with field studies of multicase families of human disease in which linkage analysis using marker genes from the chromosomal regions bearing these genes can be used to find evidence for their role in determining disease phenotypes in man. The projected view from these studies is that the future of leishmaniasis epidemiology will be all down to the DNA.
