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NIR and MIR Spectroscopy for the Detection of Adulteration of Smoking Products
No full textThis study explores the application of Mid-Infrared (MIR) and Near-Infrared (NIR) spectroscopy combined with various multivariate calibration techniques to detect the presence of cannabis in tobacco samples and tobacco in herbal smoking products. Both MIR and NIR spectra were recorded for self-prepared samples, followed by data exploration using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Hierarchical Clustering Analysis (HCA), and the calculation of binary classification models with Soft Independent Modelling of Class Analogy (SIMCA) and Partial Least Squares-Discriminant Analysis (PLS-DA). PCA demonstrated a clear differentiation between tobacco samples containing and not containing cannabis. On the other hand, based on PCA, only NIR was able to distinguish herbal smoking products adulterated and not adulterated with tobacco. HCA further clarified these results by revealing distinct clusters within the data. Modelling results indicated that MIR and NIR spectroscopy, particularly when paired with preprocessing techniques like Standard Normal Variate (SNV) and autoscaling, demonstrated high classification accuracy in SIMCA and PLS-DA, achieving correct classification rates of 90% to 100% for external test sets. Comparison of MIR and NIR revealed that NIR spectroscopy resulted in slightly more accurate models for the screening of tobacco samples for cannabis and herbal smoking products for tobacco. The developed approach could be useful for the initial screening of tobacco samples for cannabis, e.g., in a night life setting by law enforcement, but also for inspectors visiting shops selling tobacco and/or herbal smoking products.</p
Epidemiologische surveillance van poliovirus en niet-polio enterovirussen. Jaarrapport 2024.
No full text
Sinds 1999 zijn er in België geen gevallen van poliomyelitis gemeld.
België is momenteel door de Wereldgezondheidsorganisatie (WGO) geclassificeerd als een land met een laag risico op overdracht van polio.
De vaccinatiegraad is hoog (97,6 % voor 3 doses), maar kwetsbare bevolkingsgroepen lopen nog steeds risico.
In 2024 werden vijf gevallen van acute slappe verlamming gemeld. Voor een voldoende gevoelige surveillance hadden er 19 gevallen moeten worden gemeld.
Bij geen enkel van de gemelde AFP gevallen werd polio correct uitgesloten. Volgens de internationale richtlijnen moeten er 2 stoelgangsstalen geanalyseerd worden. De stalen moeten afgenomen worden binnen de 14 dagen na de start van de symptomen en met een interval van minstens 24u.
De invoering van afvalwatermonitoring heeft de algehele surveillance verbeterd.
De aanwezigheid van gemuteerde oorspronkelijk uit vaccins afgeleide poliovirussen (cVDPV) in het afvalwater van buurlanden onderstreept de noodzaak van strikte surveillance.
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The RE-Place project: Mapping the available expertise on New Approach Methodologies in Belgium
No full textCAN.HEAL - Leaflet
No full textThe CAN.HEAL project is all about upscaling available information in personalised medicine to improve access to prevention, diagnosis and treatment for all Europeans. The goal is to bridge the gap between public health genomics and genomics for diagnosis and treatment.</p
Recommended terminology for aerobiological studies: automatic and real-time monitoring methods
No full textEU-HIP – Country visit report – Lithuania
No full textThis document has been developed within the remit of the project EU interoperability with HERA’s IT platform (EU-HIP). EU-HIP is a consortium of 15 European countries, coordinated by Statens Serum Institute (SSI), Denmark. The scope of the project is to support countries to enhance and improve national IT systems for health threats surveillance and management in an efficient and coordinated manner, with the objective of obtaining interoperability with the centralised IT platform of the EU Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA). HERA’s IT platform (ATHINA — Advanced Technology for Health INtelligence and Action IT system) is currently under development and seeks to gather intelligence on health threats surveillance and medical countermeasures (MCMs) to support threat assessment and crisis management across Europe. The priority areas are pathogens with high pandemic potential (PHPP), antimicrobial resistance (AMR), and Chemical, Biological, Radiological & Nuclear (CBRN) threats, as well as appropriate medical countermeasures, such as medicinal products, medical devices and personal protective equipment (PPE). A baseline activity of the EU-HIP project is to perform a landscape assessment of countries’ IT systems, in relation to the above-mentioned priorities, across all countries involved in the consortium. In addition, in-depth country visits are being performed in a small group of countries to gain detailed insights into the functioning of such systems. This report presents the findings from the landscape assessment and in-depth country visit in Lithuania. Such exercise has also been performed in Croatia, Denmark and Iceland</p
Exploiting Viral DNA Genomes to Explore the Dispersal History of African Swine Fever Genotype II Lineages in Europe.
No full textAfrican swine fever virus (ASFV) is a highly virulent DNA virus that causes African swine fever, a severe hemorrhagic disease affecting domestic and wild pigs, leading to significant animal health burdens and economic losses. Initially limited to the sub-Saharan African region, ASFV genotype II has spread globally and is now a major concern in Africa, Europe, Asia, the Pacific and, more recently, the Caribbean. In this study, we performed phylogenetic and phylogeographic analyses using newly sequenced ASFV genomes from Lithuania, combined with previously available complete genomes, to investigate the spatiotemporal dispersal dynamics of ASFV genotype II in Europe. Our analysis suggests that ASFV genotype II has not been recently imported to Europe from other regions; instead, the spread is largely driven by long-distance dispersal, followed by regional (within-country) circulation. The estimated dispersal metrics suggest that ASFV has a slower dispersion capacity compared to other pig-transmitted viruses and is associated with a notable degree of spatial structure. Despite these findings, significant uncertainty remains regarding certain ancestral locations, highlighting challenges related to applying phylodynamic methods to DNA viruses with low genetic variability. Nevertheless, in our study, we managed to implement a phylogeographic framework to investigate major patterns of ASFV dispersion in Europe and the contribution of international importations in the establishment of regional transmission chains. This framework could be further expanded as more genomes become available. Our study emphasizes the need for increased genomic surveillance to enlarge the ASFV genome database to support outbreak control.</p
The impact of anthropogenic environmental change, including climate change, on the transmission of zoonotic diseases in a Belgian context - ZooBiodiv
No full textOver recent decades, the frequency of zoonotic disease outbreaks has risen significantly worldwide, with their emergence and re-emergence increasingly acknowledged to be closely tied to human-driven environmental pressures. These include biodiversity loss, land-use changes, wildlife exploitation, climate change, pollution, and the introduction of invasive alien species. These factors disrupt the complex transmission dynamics of numerous pathogens and parasites, often creating conditions conducive to their spread. The risk of epidemics is further exacerbated by globalization, amplifying the urgency to address these drivers.
At the Belgian level, efforts are ongoing to develop a Belgian One World One Health (OWOH) vision for preventing the emergence of zoonotic diseases at national scale. In support of this, a 12-month collaborative project between Sciensano and the Federal Public Services (FPS) Public Health, Food Chain Safety and Environment, called ZooBiodiv, was initiated in April 2024.
One objective of this project is to explore the links between anthropogenic environmental changes, including climate change, and the risk of zoonotic disease emergence and spread within a Belgian context. This analysis was conducted through a comprehensive, though not exhaustive, review of literature, encompassing peer-reviewed articles and ‘gray’ literature from relevant institutions and organizations. In doing so, this report aims to provide a general overview of the current knowledge of how five major anthropogenic drivers of zoonotic disease emergence, namely climate change, land use change, pollution, invasive alien species, and globalization, impact key variables, such as reservoir host and vector populations, that drive zoonotic risk. The focus lies on the Belgian context, which includes regions with similar climatic and socio-economic conditions.
Drawing from the literature, the report also provides preliminary recommendations that outline strategic priorities which may guide Belgium in its effort to prevent the emergence and spread of zoontic diseases.</p