Project description:Since May 2019, the Central African Republic has experienced a poliomyelitis outbreak caused by type 2 vaccine-derived polioviruses (VDPV-2s). The outbreak affected Bangui, the capital city, and 10 districts across the country. The outbreak resulted from several independent emergence events of VDPV-2s featuring recombinant genomes with complex mosaic genomes. The low number of mutations (<20) in the viral capsid protein 1-encoding region compared with the vaccine strain suggests that VDPV-2 had been circulating for a relatively short time (probably <3 years) before being isolated. Environmental surveillance, which relies on a limited number of sampling sites in the Central African Republic and does not cover the whole country, failed to detect the circulation of VDPV-2s before some had induced poliomyelitis in children.
Project description:During January 2007-July 2012, a total of 3,220 suspected yellow fever cases were reported in the Central African Republic; 55 were confirmed and 11 case-patients died. Mean delay between onset of jaundice and case confirmation was 16.6 days. Delay between disease onset and blood collection could be reduced by increasing awareness of the population.
Project description:We analyzed monkeypox disease surveillance in Central African Republic (CAR) during 2001-2021. Surveillance data show 95 suspected outbreaks, 40 of which were confirmed as monkeypox, comprising 99 confirmed and 61 suspected monkeypox cases. After 2018, CAR's annual rate of confirmed outbreaks increased, and 65% of outbreaks occurred in 2 forested regions bordering the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The median patient age for confirmed cases was 15.5 years. The overall case-fatality ratio was 7.5% (12/160) for confirmed and suspected cases, 9.6% (8/83) for children <16 years of age. Decreasing cross-protective immunity from smallpox vaccination and recent ecologic alterations likely contribute to increased monkeypox outbreaks in Central Africa. High fatality rates associated with monkeypox virus clade I also are a local and international concern. Ongoing investigations of zoonotic sources and environmental changes that increase human exposure could inform practices to prevent monkeypox expansion into local communities and beyond endemic areas.
Project description:The objective of this study was to identify gene expression markers of disease severity in a cohort of RSV infected children Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is the number one pathogen causing lower respiratory tract infection that leads to hospitalization in young children. Despite growing insights in the disease pathogenesis, the clinical presentation in these children is highly variable and heterogeneous, and reliable markers predictive of disease progression are lacking. We characterized the host response to acute RSV infection to identify biomarkers associated with RSV disease and disease severity. Whole genome transcriptome was analysed early on the disease course in blood samples from otherwise healthy children <2 years of age, who were either hospitalized (n = 110) or evaluated as outpatients (n = 37) due to RSV infection. Age-matched non-RSV-infected healthy children (n = 51) were analysed in parallel. A clustering approach on the transcriptome data revealed biologically meaningful biomarkers associated with progression to severe RSV disease. Overall, the whole blood transcriptome pointed to alterations in frequency of specific immune cell types (neutrophils, T- and B-lymphocytes, NK cells, monocytes) in RSV-infected children. In addition, a cluster enriched for neutrophil degranulation genes, was highly correlated with clinical disease severity. The driver genes of this cluster (OLFM4, ELANE, MMP8, BPI, CEACAM8, LCN2, LTF and MPO) were selected and validated in independent existing transcriptomics datasets. We identified a set of genes involved in neutrophil degranulation as markers for RSV disease severity. Additional prospective studies using these markers are required to further confirm their value as predictive tool in routine clinical care.
Project description:Four cholera outbreaks were reported in the Central African Republic during 1997-2016. We show that the outbreak isolates were Vibrio cholerae O1 serotype Inaba from 3 seventh pandemic El Tor sublineages originating from West Africa (sublineages T7 and T9) or the African Great Lakes Region (T10).