To select peptides with broad recognition by human echinococcosis patients, our bioinformatic selection aimed at exported or parasite surface exposed antigens. Such proteins are likely to elicit an immune response. A major drawback was the scarce number of full-length Echinococcus spp. protein sequences deposited in public databases. Thus it might be worthwhile for further studies to adapt the bioinformatic selection criteria to the use of partial EST sequences. Our data points out the need for screening more peptide candidates. Further investigations on whole genome level are likely to provide additional candidates with sufficient sensitivity and specificity, which can eventually be combined to a synthetic antigen pool. Single or pooled LSPs are compatible with high throughput platform technologies such as luminex or biacore technology that could replace ELISA in the future. Additionally to surface or extracellular localization, one criterion during bioinformatic selection was prediction of secondary structures. Alpha-helical coiled-coils and intrinsically unstructured proteins are believed to adopt native conformation in aqueous solution and might therefore be well suited for immunoassays. It is widely accepted that the majority of epitopes are of the conformational type [42] . Our results showed that for diagnostic purposes the predicted alpha-helical and alpha-helical coiled-coil peptides were superior to peptides deriving from intrinsically unstructured regions. Among the serum-reactive peptides identified by microarray screening, 14 peptides were of predicted alpha-helical organization, while only 3 peptides derived from intrinsically unstructured regions. Furthermore, during our extensive testing of candidates, all IUR peptides were dismissed due to lack of sensitivity.