0000000000042666
AUTHOR
Anne J. Jääskeläinen
A European multicentre evaluation of detection and typing methods for human enteroviruses and parechoviruses using RNA transcripts
Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) detection has become the gold standard for diagnosis and typing of enterovirus (EV) and human parechovirus (HPeV) infections. Its effectiveness depends critically on using the appropriate sample types and high assay sensitivity as viral loads in cerebrospinal fluid samples from meningitis and sepsis clinical presentation can be extremely low. This study evaluated the sensitivity and specificity of currently used commercial and in‐house diagnostic and typing assays. Accurately quantified RNA transcript controls were distributed to 27 diagnostic and 12 reference laboratories in 17 European countries for blinded testing. Transcripts represented the four human EV…
Serological Survey of Rodent-Borne Viruses in Finnish Field Voles
In northern Europe, rodent populations display cyclic density fluctuations, which can be correlated with the human incidence of zoonotic diseases they spread. During density peaks, field voles (Microtus agrestis) become one of the most abundant rodent species in northern Europe, yet little is known of the viruses they host. We screened 709 field voles, trapped from 14 sites over three years, for antibodies against four rodent-borne, potentially zoonotic viruses or virus groups: hantaviruses, lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV), Ljungan virus (LV) and orthopoxviruses (OPV). Antibodies against all four viruses were detected. However, seroprevalence of hantaviruses, LV and LCMV was low. …