On Friday 24 June, France reported a cluster of eight patients with bloody diarrhoea, after having participated in an event in the commune of Bègles around Bordeaux on 8 June. Of these, seven have developed HUS, a severe complication of E. coli infection. In three of the patients, infection with E. coli O104:H4 has been confirmed.
On June 14, Eurosurveillance published new information on the characteristics of the German outbreak strain of E.coli and how these microbiological findings have been shared in real time by public health microbiology experts to disseminate best laboratory practice for case detection and public health investigations across Europe and beyond.
Today, the German authorities published a press release on the current Shiga toxin-producing E.coli outbreak. In their joint statement they recommended in particular to abstain from eating raw sprouts.
As parts of Germany are considered potential colonization areas for A. albopictus, monitoring the trends of Chikungunya importation to Germany is a prerequisite for early detection of potential autochthonus cases.
In September 2010, two cases of autochthonous dengue fever were diagnosed in metropolitan France for the first time. The cases occurred in Nice, southeast France, where the vector Aedes albopictus is established.
Aedes aegypti is a highly specialized mosquito species feeding predominantly on humans and breeding in artificial water holding containers in urban areas, and currently restricted to subtropical and tropical areas. Williams et al. focus on the reasons why Ae. aegypti once occurred in locations where the mosquito does not occur anymore in Australia, the more temperate drier parts of the country.
In recent years human diseases due to mosquito-borne viruses were increasingly reported in Emilia-Romagna region (Italy), from the chikungunya virus in 2007 to the West Nile virus (WNV) in 2008. An extensive entomological survey was performed in 2009 to establish the presence and distribution of mosquito arboviruses in this region, with particular reference to flaviviruses.
Using surveillance data obtained from 21,888 imported Plasmodium falciparum cases in France during 1996-2003, factors independently associated with severe malaria (832 cases; ≈3.8%) were older age, European origin, travel to eastern Africa, absence of chemoprophylaxis, initial visit to a general practitioner, time to diagnosis of 4 to 12 days, and diagnosis during the fall-winter season.
This paper describes a small retrospective observational study of Israeli travellers presenting to a tropical medicine clinic with a history of prolonged (4 weeks), non-traumatic arthralgia or arthritis over a 5 year period.