Emerging areas of research reported during the CDC National Conference on Pfiesteria: From biology to public health

Since its identification in 1996, the marine dinoflagellate Pfiesteria pisc icida Steidinger & Burkholder has been the focus of intense scientific inqu iry in disciplines ranging from estuarine ecology to epidemiology and from molecular biology to public health. Despite these research efforts, the ext ent of human exposure and the degree of human illness directly associated w ith Pfiesteria is still in the process of being defined. Unfortunately, dur ing this same time Pfiesteria has also stimulated media coverage that in so me instances jumped ahead of the science to conclude that Pfiesteria presen ts a widespread threat to human health. Political and economic forces also came into play when the tourism and seafood industries were adversely impac ted by rumors of toxin-laden water in estuaries along the east coast of the United States. Amid this climate of evolving science and public concern, P fiesteria has emerged as a highly controversial public health issue. In Oct ober 2000 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sponsored the National Conference on Pfiesteria: From Biology to Public Health to bring together Pfiesteria researchers from many disparate disciplines. The goal of this me eting was to describe the state of the science and identify directions for future research. In preparation for the conference an expert peer-review pa nel was commissioned to review the existing literature and identify researc h gaps; the summary of their review is published in this monograph. During the meeting primary Pfiesteria researchers presented previously unpublished results. The majority of those presentations are included as peer-reviewed articles in this monograph. The discussion portion of the conference focus ed upon researcher-identified research gaps. This article details the discu ssion segments of the conference and makes reference to the presentations a s it describes emerging areas of Pfiesteria research.