ECDC is supporting a large number of targeted External Quality Assessment (EQA) schemes with voluntary participation by reference or primary laboratories, which are active members of EU surveillance networks.
This report presents the results of the fourth round of the EQA on AST for national public health laboratories on Salmonella (hereafter Salmonella EQA4-AST) within the Food- and Waterborne Diseases and Zoonoses Network (FWD-Net).
These report presents the results of the EQA on antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) for national public health laboratories for Campylobacter within the Food‐ and Waterborne Diseases and Zoonoses Network (FWD-Net).
This report presents the objectives, methods, results, and conclusions of a collaborative study called the 'European Listeria Typing Exercise’ (ELiTE), as well as recommendations for further studies.
A collaborative study between ECDC, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the European Union Reference Laboratory (EURL) for Listeria monocytogenes* found a relatively high degree of dissemination of certain listeriosis bacteria in the food chain and in the human population across the European Union (EU).
Between May 2018 and December 2020, 193 human cases of Salmonella Enteritidis sequence type (ST)11 were reported in Denmark (2), Finland (4), France (33), Germany (6), Ireland (12), the Netherlands (3), Poland (5), Sweden (6), and the United Kingdom (UK) (122). One in five cases was hospitalised. One death was reported. Fifty percent of the cases were children ≤ 18 years. The most recent case was reported by the UK in December 2020.
This document provides laboratories with a single protocol for producing recombinant full-length hamster prion protein and using it to perform the Real-Time Quaking-Induced Conversion assay (RT-QuIC), which can distinguish sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (sCJD) from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD).
This report provides an analysis of the EQA performance of laboratories in the 28 EU/EEA countries in relation to the detection/isolation, identification, enumeration and quantification of Legionella spp. and the further characterisation of L. pneumophila, by serogrouping and sequence-based typing, from both clinical and environmental samples, where applicable.
This report presents the results of the ninth round of the external quality assessment (EQA-9) scheme for typing of Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC).
This report presents the results of the fourth round of the EQA on antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) for national public health laboratories for Campylobacter (Campylobacter EQA4-AST) within the Food‐ and Waterborne Diseases and Zoonoses Network (FWD-Net). The objectives of this EQA4-AST were to determine the accuracy of quantitative AST results reported by participants; to identify common laboratory problems related to the guidance in the EU protocol, and to assess the overall comparability of routinely collected AST data from national public health reference laboratories across Europe.