In silico selected peptides were screened for diagnostic potential on a microarray platform (Alta Bioscience, University of Birmingham, UK). From a total of 45 peptides contained in the microarray, 17 showed reactivity with pooled or single sera from echinococcosis patients (8/31 peptides from E. multilocularis, 9/14 peptides from E. granulosus). The peptides that reacted above the cut-off determined from blood donor sera (FI.1009) are listed in table 2. These 17 peptides were considered to have diagnostic potential and were therefore subjected to further testing of specificity and sensitivity. The predicted structure of the reactive peptide candidates was mostly alpha-helical coiled-coil (7 peptides) and alpha-helical (7 peptides). 3 peptides were predicted to be intrinsically unstructured.