Join Us! The 1st International Blastocystis Symposium

The 1st International Blastocystis Symposium will be held in Ankara, May 28-29 in 2015 under the auspices of Gazi University, Faculty of Medicine, Ankara, Turkey.

The main organisers are Dr. Funda Dogruman-Al, Gazi University, and Dr. Christen Rune Stensvold, Statens Serum Institut, Denmark. We kindly invite you to join us!

Gazi Medical Faculty and Hospital

The past few years have seen a substantial surge in Blastocystis research in many areas, and so the main foci of this symposium will be:

• Diagnosis and molecular characterisation
• Epidemiology
• Evolutionary biology and advances in genomics
• Intestinal ecology
• Clinical significance including potential relationship to irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)

The symposium will also serve as an initial forum to address and discuss critical questions including: 

• What is the evidence of Blastocystis pathogenicity?
• If Blastocystis may be pathogenic, what then are the factors involved? Which mechanisms could potentially be involved in the development of disease?
• Could specific host factors be responsible for the development of symptomatic Blastocystis infections, and if so, how can these be identified?
• How can Blastocystis infections be controlled?
• Is there any correlation between the human intestinal microbiota and Blastocystis carriage?
• How can novel technology and multi-disciplinary approaches assist in answering fundamental questions concerning the clinical significance of Blastocystis?

We have received very positive responses so far from quite a few of the leading scientists in Blastocystis research expressing their interest in the symposium, and obviously our goal is to be able to raise significant and relevant funding to cover at least some of the expenses related to the meeting.

We hope that the symposium will attract not only experts on Blastocystis, but also biologists and medical doctors in the fields of clinical microbiology, infectious diseases, gastroenterology, evolutionary biology, and microbial ecology. Certainly, those who have expressed interest so far cover a wide spectrum of these research areas.

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