What has been going on in Europe in bivalve pathology?

摘要

Research on bivalve diseases has been mostly focused on pathogen morphology and ultrastructure, effect of external factors on pathogens or infectivity, and on the development of immune and molecular diagnostic techniques. Recently, specific PCRs have been set up for the most important bivalve pathogens being more sensitive than traditional techniques such as histology. Although in the last years an increased effort has been done on bivalve pathology studies, a series of subjects remain to be tackled such as the validation of new diagnostic methods, the pathogenicity of the newly identified organisms, the real mortality data on bivalve culture, disease resistance selection programmes or the effect of pathogens on bivalves immune system. Trans-national research actions involving multidisciplinary research groups will facilitate to answer many questions still not solved in bivalve pathology.