ESCMID weekly news 21.01.2020

21 January 2020: ESCMID Weekly News
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21 January 2020
WEEKLY NEWS

Dear colleagues,

Please find below the latest edition of ESCMID Weekly News.

With kind regards,
ESCMID Executive Office.

 

ECCMID 2020 is approaching: don’t miss the opportunity to enjoy Prof. Rotem Sorek’s Keynote Lecture. Register now!

We are extremely pleased to have Prof. Sorek (Incumbent of the Rowland and Sylvia Schaefer Career Development Chair, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel) as a keynote speaker at ECCMID 2020! The title of his lecture will be “The immune system of bacteria: CRISPR and beyond”.

Visit the ECCMID 2020 website to find out about our outstanding keynote speakers and register now!

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Call for examiners for proposed European Specialist
Certificate Examination in Infectious Disease

In collaboration with ESCMID, the UEMS Infectious Disease Board is planning a pilot European Specialist Certificate examination in April 2021 and needs a large group of volunteer specialists to contribute questions for inclusion in the exam.

We are keen to involve specialists at all levels of experience after specialist registration, from as many countries as possible, in order to represent the wide variety of practice across Europe. Applications for this round must be received by 18:00 CET on Friday 31 January 2020, but expressions of interest for following years may also be sent.

Further details can be found in the Call for Question Writers document. The application form can be found on the ESCMID website here.

Completed application forms and/or queries should be addressed to uemsinfectiousdiseases@gmail.com

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Via EITaF: 2019-nCoV, Wuhan outbreak – 136 new cases

With 136 news cases added by the Chinese authorities and spread inside China to Shenzhen and Beijing and outside China to South Korea, the situation is still unfolding.
It is clear that human to human transmission must take place, but how infective the new virus is, is not known at present.

Read more on the
EITaF website.

› Read more

 

ESCMID Guideline Highlight: the first version of the
“ESCMID manual for clinical practice guidelines and other guidance documents” has now entered the public consultation phase.

The first version of the “ESCMID manual for clinical practice guidelines and other guidance documents” was issued on September 15th 2019, as a result of the concerted efforts of ESCMID Guideline Subcommitee members.
The document is publicly available here.

The ESCMID guidelines Subcommittee is now planning to update the document and is calling ESCMID members to participate into the revision with a public consultation phase.

The ESCMID members wishing to comment on the manuscript need to express their commitment following this link to receive the form to provide comments.
The deadline for providing feedbacks and comments on the manuscript is 16th February 2020.

If you have any questions, please address them to guidancedocuments@escmid.org.

› Read more

 

Associate Professor Jarmila Jelínková MSc, PhD, passed away

Jarmila Jelínková (13/12/1928 – 3/6/2019)

The ESCMID Family was saddened to learn of the passing of Jarmila Jelínková, a long-time ESCMID partner and collaborator.

A full obituary can be found here.

Jarmila Jelínková passed away on 3 June 2019.

› Read more

 

EMA communication – Human medicines: highlights of 2019

EMA has recently published an overview of its key recommendations in 2019 on the authorisation and safety monitoring of medicines for human use.

Innovative medicines are essential to advancing public health as they bring new opportunities to treat certain diseases. In 2019, EMA recommended 66 medicines for marketing authorisation. Of these, 30 had a new active substance which had never been authorised in the EU before.

Once a medicine is authorised by the European Commission and prescribed to patients, EMA and the EU Member States continuously monitor its quality and benefit-risk balance and take regulatory action when needed. Measures can include a change to the product information, the suspension or withdrawal of a medicine, or a recall of a limited number of batches. An overview of some of the most notable recommendations is also included in the document.

For more information on the evaluation and authorisation of medicines, please click here.

› Read more

 

CMI highlight: Influenza increases invasive meningococcal disease risk in temperate countries

Invasive meningococcal disease (IMD) is a severe bacterial infection that displays wintertime seasonality in temperate countries. Case-fatality depends on a variety of factors, including infecting strain, rapidity of recognition and treatment, and resource availability in the country of occurrence, but is generally high. IMD displays seasonality in many regions, and seasonal epidemics appear linked to environmental influences. In this article, A. Salomon et al. sought to examine the association of environmental factors and influenza with IMD risk in four high-income, temperate countries (Australia, Canada, France, and the United States).

The study showed an increased IMD risk two weeks after surging influenza risk that was homogeneous across regions and statistically significant. This is also biologically plausible based on previous studies that observe peaks in influenza activity in the United States to precede peaks in meningococcal risk by a lag of approximately 2 weeks. On the other hand, no such generalizable and homogeneous increase in risk of IMD with environmental exposures was found. The authors conclude that influenza infection contributes to IMD risk in temperate, high-income countries. Based on this information, they propose that influenza control programs, such as seasonal influenza vaccination, may have the additional benefit of reducing IMD risk.

› Read more

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The ESCMID Newsletter is issued on behalf of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID) by the ESCMID Executive Office. It contains announcements of ESCMID-related matters and other information of interest to professionals in the infection field.

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Nahoru