This book is a compilation of presentations at a NATO Advanced Research Workshop on the “Molecular Biology of Spirochetes” held at the Czech Republic National Institute of Public Health, Prague, Czech Republic, December 5–8, 2005. This meeting was supported by the NATO Programme for Security Through Science, the United States National Institutes of Health, Office of Rare Diseases, the United States Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Czech Republic National Institute of Public Health, Czech Republic and New York Medical College, Valhalla, New York, U.S.A. It was organized to foster the exchange of experience among scientists from NATO countries in North America, Western and Eastern Europe.

This type of encounter is valuable because diseases produced by spirochetes, including Lyme borreliosis, syphilis and leptospirosis, are on the rise worldwide, and because the biology of their causative organisms, their epidemiology, and clinical presentation display important variations in different geographical areas. For example B. burgdorferi sensu lato produces approximately 20,000 cases of Lyme borreliosis a year in the United States and 60,000 cases in Europe, but B. burgdorferi sensu stricto, B. afzelii and B. garinii are transmitted by different vectors and have different reservoirs and clinical presentations in these different geographic areas. Awareness and better understanding of these variations by researchers in the field is thus highly relevant to improvements in their prevention and treatment, and critical for improvement of human health.

The meeting was organized with oral presentations by major speakers and poster sessions by students and postdoctoral fellows from Eastern Europe. This volume includes not only the presentations of the major speakers but also several additional presentations by investigators who were invited but were unable to attend. For many reasons (including meeting organization and funding limitations), this volume does not intend to represent a comprehensive coverage of all aspects of spirochete biology. It rather focuses on a series of state of the art presentations of the research taking place in the laboratories of the contributors. As such, we hope that it may be useful as an introduction to those individuals entering in the burgeoning field of spirochete research. We would also like to believe that the meeting and this book will serve as a stimulus for researchers in the field to widen collaborations and exchanges between investigators in the different geographical areas where spirochetal diseases are common since these interactions can only be of benefit to the field.

Finally, we would like to thank the participants who risked the cold weather to attend the meeting, the authors who despite their inability to attend were willing to submit chapters to this book, the funding institutions mentioned above, and in particular, Drs. Phil Baker, Patti Rosa, Tom Schwan, Frank Gherardini, Ms. Marylin E. Kunzweiler (United States National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases), Dr. Jorge Benach (Stony Brook University), Ms. Mary C. Demory (United States National Institutes of Health), Dr. Marina Cinco (University of Trieste), Dr. Michael Norgard (University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center) and Dr. Ira Schwartz (New York Medical College), whose efforts were critical to our securing some of the funds that supported the meeting, and TestLine, Qiagen, BioConsult, Roche, Biowestern, Generi BioTech and BagMed who provided additional support for this meeting. We would also like to thank Ms. Leonor Delgado for editorial assistance and Ms. Harriett V. Harrison for her outstanding and continuing assistance in organizing the meeting and in preparing the manuscripts that compose this book.

Felipe C. Cabello, New York Medical College, Valhalla, New York, USA

Dagmar Hulinska, Czech Republic National Institute of Public Health, Prague, Czech Republic

Henry P. Godfrey, New York Medical College, Valhalla, New York, USA

July, 2006