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COVID-19 vaccine responses are influenced by distinct risk factors in naive and SARS-CoV-2 experienced hemodialysis recipients
No full textBACKGROUND: Clinical risk factors of deficient immune responses to COVID-19 mRNA vaccination in SARS-CoV-2 naive hemodialysis recipients (HDR) have already been identified. Clinical factors influencing hybrid immunity induced by SARS-CoV-2 infection and vaccination in HDR have not been reported.
METHODS: A comprehensive analysis of antibody (Ab) and T cell responses to two doses of BNT162b2 mRNA vaccination was performed in 103 HDR, including 75 SARS-CoV-2 naive and 28 experienced patients, and in 106 healthy controls (HC) not undergoing HD, including 40 SARS-CoV-2 naive and 66 experienced subjects. Clinical risk factors associated with lower humoral and cellular immunity were analyzed in SARS-CoV-2 naive and experienced HDR by univariate and multivariate analyses.
RESULTS: Naive HDR had lower neutralizing and non-neutralizing antibody responses to vaccination than naive HC; lower vaccine responses were correlated with previous transplantation, immunosuppressive treatment, corticosteroid treatment, hypoalbuminemia, older age, hypertension, and negative response to hepatitis B vaccination. In contrast, vaccine responses of SARS-CoV-2 experienced HDR were similar to those of HC and were correlated with time between infection and vaccination and with previous transplantation, but not with the other risk factors associated with lower vaccine responses in naive HDR.
CONCLUSION: COVID-19 vaccine responses are influenced by distinct risk factors in SARS-CoV-2 naive and experienced HDR. These observations have important implications for the understanding of vaccine-induced immunity and for the management of this vulnerable patient population.</p
Behandeling van verslaving in de huisartsenpraktijk. Epidemiologische situatie tussen 2016 en 2020, gegevens van het Netwerk van huisartsenpeilpraktijken.
No full textEquivalent Clinical Accuracy of Human Papillomavirus DNA Testing Using Cobas 4800 and 6800 Human Papillomavirus Systems in Paired Urine and Cervical Samples.
No full textThe use of urine for cervical cancer screening is gaining international attention, although more data on the relative clinical accuracy of validated human papillomavirus (HPV) DNA tests on urine versus cervical samples are needed. This study primarily seeks to evaluate the clinical performance of Roche cobas 4800 and 6800 HPV Systems in first-void urine, collected at home, compared with clinician-collected cervical samples. Paired first-void urine (index test) and cervical samples (comparator test) from 499 females enrolled at five Belgian colposcopy clinics were analyzed with cobas HPV Systems. Colposcopy and histology of biopsies were used as reference test (trial registration number: NCT03064087). Sample processing protocols and clinical thresholds proposed by the manufacturer for cervical samples were also applied for first-void urine. In the total study population, HPV testing on first-void urine was similarly sensitive [ratio, 0.98; 95% CI, 0.93-1.02] and specific for cobas 4800 HPV (ratio, 1.00; 95% CI, 0.91-1.10) and cobas HPV for use on the cobas 6800 System (ratio, 0.96; 95% CI, 0.91-1.02; ratio, 1.01; 95% CI, 0.93-1.09) compared with cervical samples (P ≥ 0.05). Good to excellent HPV test agreements between paired samples were observed (κ = 0.68 to 0.87). In summary, HPV testing using cobas 4800 and 6800 HPV Systems was as accurate on first-void urine as on cervical samples collected by a clinician.</p
Health networking on cancer in the European Union: a ‘green paper’ by the EU Joint Action on Networks of Expertise (JANE)
No full textHealth networking is in principle a formidable instrument to address many challenges posed by cancer, one of the two most common and most lethal non-communicable chronic diseases. The European Union (EU)’s Beating Cancer Plan foresaw the addition of new health networks to the four already existing European Reference Networks on rare cancers: the Network of Comprehensive Cancer Centres and several networks of expertise (NoEs), which will be shortly deployed on items as complex and poor-prognosis cancers, palliative care, survivorship, personalised primary and secondary prevention, omic technologies, hi-tech medical resources, and cancers in adolescents and young adults. The community of experts of the EU Joint Action, due to build such NoEs, has drafted this ‘green paper’, incorporating 13 open questions, in an effort to foster discussion on some open questions about health networking on cancer in the EU. These affect highly diverse issues such as the following: how gaps in research into the instrument of health networking may be filled; which items lend themselves more to health networking in the EU; what degree of cooperation and harmonisation should be required of EU member states to best exploit health networking and give rise to European networks of national/regional networks; how the idea of subsidiarity may be best interpreted to support health networking in the context of EU treaties, which basically do not include health; how health networks should be funded and with what degree of cooperation between the EU and national levels; whether EU health networks should be shaped as legal entities or could give rise to secondary legal entities, also with a view to fundraising; how health networks should be best shaped to advance cancer research and how the EU regulatory system should be updated to exploit such impulse to health networks, in view of the EU General Data Protection Regulation and the new EU Health Data Space; how artificial intelligence can be exploited today within health networks and to what extent it will be able to overcome challenges such as the current lack of interoperability of electronic health records and the language barrier across the EU; and how health networks should involve patients and their groups, with regard to their formal role within EU health networks as well as their ability to have a say in items such as production of clinical practice guidelines, the design of investigator-driven clinical trials, EU regulatory decisions on medicines and devices, health service data governance, and identification of unmet needs.</p
Development and optimization of the chromatographic fingerprinting method for the detection of potency enhancer plants in food supplements
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be.Prepared: Setting up a cloud-based bioinformatics platform and coupled NRC usability platform for integrated genomic-epidemiological analysis at a national level
No full textbe.Prepared (Belgian Preparedness Architecture for Infectious Diseases) is an overarching Belgian infrastructure that facilitates the integration of health and biological data from various sources with whole genome sequencing (WGS) and clinical/epidemiological data to strengthen genomic surveillance and public health response. The infrastructure consists of several interconnected components, including (i) a cloud-based bioinformatics platform for processing microbial WGS data using harmonized bioinformatics pipelines, (ii) a local NRC-usability platform supporting different pathogens, and (iii) the healthdata.be platform for collecting clinical/epidemiological data. Key characteristics of the infrastructure include automated data flows, near real-time data processing to enable integrated genomic-epidemiological analysis and scalability to allow pandemic preparedness. Here, we present two major components of the infrastructure: the bioinformatics platform and the NRC-usability platform.
The bioinformatics platform is hosted in Azure cloud. It processes pseudonymized microbial WGS data (supporting both Illumina and nanopore sequencing), including removal of human DNA and extensive quality control, and runs state-of-the-art pathogen-specific pipelines to obtain high-quality indicators (cgMLST profiles, AMR genes, serotypes etc.) which are stored in a genomic database. The platform performs periodic reanalyses of existing datasets when underlying reference sequence databases are updated ensuring availability of up-to-date genomic indicators. For bacterial pathogens, automated detection of genomic clusters is performed using single-linkage clustering of cgMLST profiles to alert experts at the National Reference Centers for human microbiology (NRCs) of potentially ongoing outbreaks for epidemiological investigation. The cloud-based nature of the platform makes it extremely scalable and able to process increased data volumes during outbreaks and even pandemics.
Obtained genomic indicators are automatically transferred to the central NRC-usability platform, in order to be coupled with clinical/epidemiological data that are also automatically deposited on this platform via healthdata.be. The NRC-usability platform consists of different pathogen-specific instances, accessible only by the responsible NRC. This local platform is based on the Bacterial Isolate Genome Sequence Database (BIGSdb) open-source software, modified to accommodate pathogen-specific genomic indicators and health data. It allows extensive data exploration and visualization. Finally, the NRC-usability platform is also connected to an internal instance of Microreact to help the NRCs follow the spatio-temporal evolution of the infections at the national scale.
be.Prepared currently supports genomic epidemiology for five microbial pathogens, each covered by specific NRCs: Salmonella enterica, Neisseria meningitidis, Listeria monocytogenes, Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Influenza. Efforts are ongoing to expand to additional pathogens. This initiative demonstrates the feasibility of microbial genomic surveillance and outbreak detection at a national scale.</p
Food consumption survey 2022-2023: Summary report on Food consumption and adherence to dietary guidelines in the Belgian population
No full textThe National Food Consumption Survey (FCS) is a repeated cross-sectional survey aiming to collect detailed and quantitative information on the food consumption, nutrient intake and nutritional status of the general population. Physical activity and sedentary behaviour are also investigated. The third edition of this survey was conducted in 2022-2023 among the Belgian population aged 3 years and above, with 3777 persons randomly selected from the National Register participating between March 2022 and December 2023.
This third summary report presents key findings on how the population in Belgium eats and adheres to food-based dietary guidelines. It includes results on the habitual consumption of specific food groups and the proportion of the population meeting food-based dietary guidelines defined by the Superior Health Council. For food groups with low consumption, the proportion of people who never consume the respective foods was also examined. The results are analysed for the total population and further broken down by age, sex, educational level and region. Notably, the 2022-2023 survey provides results for older adults (65 years and older), which is new compared to the previous edition. Where possible, findings were compared with results from the previous survey of 2014-2015.
More results are available on our website.
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Advancing automated identification of airborne fungal spores: guidelines for cultivation and reference dataset creationAbstract
No full textAirborne bioparticles, including fungal spores, are of major concern for human and plant health, necessitating precise monitoring systems. While a European norm exists for manual volumetric monitoring, there’s a growing interest in automated real-time methods. However, these methods rely heavily on machine learning, facing challenges due to diverse particle characteristics and limited training data availability, especially for fungal spores. This study aims to address this gap by outlining best practices for collecting reference material and creating tailored datasets for training algorithms. Using 17 fungal species from the Belgian fungi collection BCCM/IHEM, including five Alternaria species, key aspects such as in vitro cultivation, dry spore harvest, and aerosolization were addressed. Simple classification models were developed, achieving varying accuracies on different monitors. The Plair Rapid-E+ demonstrated accuracies ranging from 83.4% to 95.1% (macro average F1-score 0.61), with better recognition for Cladosporium spp. and Curvularia caricae-papayae. The SwisensPoleno Jupiter, initially achieving a macro average F1-score of 0.77 with holographic images of eight genera, improved to 0.83 when combined with fluorescence data. Accuracies ranged from 55 to 95%, with notable performance for Alternaria spp. and Curvularia caricae-papayae. Species differentiation was also shown to be possible for Cladosporium, but was more difficult for some Alternaria species, while the macro average F1-score remained good (0.72). Overall, this protocol paves the way for more efficient, standard, and accurate automatic identification of airborne fungal spores.</p
