Rebecca Handley

London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine | LSHTM · Department of Infectious Disease

Background Yaws, caused by Treponema pallidum subsp. pertenue , is a skin neglected tropical disease. It is targeted for eradication by 2030, primarily using mass drug administration (MDA) with azithromycin. Traditionally, diagnosis of yaws has relied on clinical examination and serological testing. However, these approaches have poor diagnostic pe...

Background Yaws is targeted for eradication by 2030, using a strategy based on mass drug administration (MDA) with azithromycin. New diagnostics are needed to aid eradication. Serology is currently the mainstay for yaws diagnosis; however, inaccuracies associated with current serological tests makes it difficult to fully assess the need for and imp...

Background: In the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, the sign trachomatous inflammation-follicular (TF) is common, but ocular infection with Chlamydia trachomatis is not. It is therefore debatable whether azithromycin mass drug administration (MDA), the recommended antibiotic treatment strategy for trachoma's elimination as a public health problem, is...

Introduction: In the peri-elimination setting, the positive predictive value of trachomatous inflammation-follicular (TF), the primary marker used to determine need for antibiotics for trachoma, is suboptimal. Here, three non-TF measures are used to compare two regions where TF prevalence exceeds the threshold for intervention, but where the Chlam...

Background: Yaws is a neglected tropical disease and results in lesions of skin, soft tissues and bones. PCR plays an important part in surveillance. Methods: Children suspected to have yaws were enrolled. From the largest lesion, paired swabs were collected, one in transport medium and one as a dry swab. In children with multiple lesions we col...

Introduction Yaws is a neglected tropical disease and results in lesions of skin, soft tissues and bones. PCR plays an important part in surveillance. Methods Children suspected to have yaws were enrolled. From the largest lesion paired swabs were collected; one into transport medium and one as a dry swab. In children with multiple lesions we coll...

Yaws is a neglected tropical disease targeted for eradication by 2020. Kiribati, a Pacific Island nation, was previously endemic for yaws but lacks recent data from which its current endemicity status could be determined. This study tested antibody responses to Treponema pallidum to determine if transmission of yaws is taking place among children i...

Introduction Trachoma is endemic in several Pacific Island countries. The aims of this study were to (a) identify future trachoma mapping needs in the Pacific and (b) to examine whether any temporal trends in trachoma prevalence could be ascertained from the historical literature on trachoma in the Pacific Islands. Methods Human studies of trachom...

PRISMA checklist required by journal publication guidelines. (DOC)

Quality control questions used in the evaluation of trachoma studies. (DOCX)

A summary of all the articles included in this review. This table includes the quality control assessment used on the prevalence studies. (DOC)