♦ 1st April 2015 ♦

In the frame of its mandate of EURL for rabies serology (Council Decision 2000/258/EC), the Anses-Nancy laboratory for rabies and wildlife, France, organizes each year inter-laboratory aptitude tests for the purposes of Member States or third countries authorization to carry out the serological tests to monitor the effectiveness of the anti-rabies vaccination. A favourable result of the appraisal of the applicant laboratory documented by the ANSES-Nancy laboratory is a pre-requisite for the appraisal.

This year, 67 laboratories will participate to the inter-laboratory aptitude test for rabies serology. Sending of the panels will be proceeded around the end of April 2015.

Read more about Approved Laboratories in the EU and in Third Countries (ec.europa.eu)
 

♦ 30 March 2015 ♦

As announced last month, the EURL laboratory network is invited to participate in the annual overview of tests performed in the NRLs. This year the survey is undertaken online.

Deadline for submission is postponed to 15th April...

Read more news about the annual overview of tests performed in the NRLs

♦ 20 March 2015 ♦ 

This book is the second volume of the edition of “Current Laboratory Techniques in Rabies Diagnosis, Research and Prevention”. The overall objective is to provide updated information on techniques, including reference methods, to detect lyssaviruses and also to supply resources for those involved in rabies management and research, both for animal and human rabies. These books are very useful for rabies laboratory workers involved in rabies surveillance and oral vaccination monitoring by using reference tests for rabies diagnosis, serology and potency testing of vaccines as well as for scientists willing to design new tools. Recent methods and novel approaches are also detailed in the books.

Most of the methods are clearly described following a template of laboratory protocol or routine Standard Operating Procedure. For each method, a list of the equipment, materials and reagents is generally detailed and a discussion debates the critical parameters and troubleshooting, precautions for health safety, alternative methods (if any), advantages and limitations of the method and the perspectives for the future.

Contains and list of contributors can be found here (books.google.fr).
 

♦ 01 April 2015 ♦  NDRVMI, Sofia, Bulgaria

Rabies laboratory
The Rabies laboratory is a structural unit which is part of the National Center for Animal Health in National Diagnostic Research Veterinary Medical Institute, a specialized structure of the Bulgarian Food Safety Agency (BFSA). It has been accredited by the Executive Agency “Bulgarian Accreditation Service" according to EN ISO/IEC 17025 standard since 2009. The staff is composed of 3: a veterinarian (Dr. Darinka Ilieva, DVM, PhD), a molecular biologist (Mariya Staleva) and a laboratory assistant (Teodora Mateva). They are trained to perform diagnostic and rabies serological studies in animals. All national studies related to passive and active surveillance of rabies in Bulgaria are undertaken at the NRL for RCEV.

Head of NRL for RCEV
Assoc. Prof. Darinka Ilieva, DVM is a scientist graduated with a PhD in Virology. She has 10-year experience in a private practice with small pets and an 18-year experience as a virologist, including a 6-year experience in rabies.

Epidemiological evolution and history of rabies in Bulgaria
The first case of rabies in Bulgaria was reported in 1896. From 1896 to 1973 rabies appears in the classic form of “street rabies”. Thanks to the efforts made on the one hand, for the limitation of the population of stray dogs, and on the other hand through the domestic dog vaccination campaigns undertaken since 1956,  ”street rabies” have decreased in our country.
These measures have shifted the circulation of rabies virus to wild populations, causing sylvatic rabies. Wildlife mediated rabies was first detected in 1974 in the northern part of the country. From 1979 to 1981, no rabies cases were detected, although still for unknown reasons.
In Europe, including Bulgaria, the red fox (Vulpes vulpes) is the main rabies virus reservoir in wildlife.

Rabies control history in dates

Bat surveillance in Bulgaria
During 2014, in collaboration with our colleagues from the Bulgarian Academy of Science we did a research project for a detailed analysis of the Bulgarian bat populations regarding occurrence and carrying of rabies. This research project requests a financial support and will be undertaken in the future.

Contact
Assoc. Prof. Darinka Ilieva, Ph.D
Head of NRL of Rabies and Control the Effectiveness of the Vaccination
National Diagnostic Research Veterinary Medical Institute
15A Pencho Slaveikov, Blvd.
1606, Sofia - Bulgaria
emd@mail.orbitel.bg
(+359) 877 800 341 - (+359-2) 952 53 06

♦ 31 March 2015 ♦

The annual meeting for the EURL for rabies will take place this year in Zagreb, Croatia. This meeting will be held in Aristos Hotel (Cebini 33, Buzin, 10010 Zagreb), not very far from the airport. The EURL for rabies kindly asks the participants to stay at the Aristos Hotel (same place as the meeting) where special rates have been negotiated for them. The hotel proposes to organise transfers from/to the airport and/or town centre. Caution! Rates on registration form are only valid until 11.04.2015.



 

♦ 31 March 2015 ♦

As announced last month, the EURL laboratory network is invited to participate in the annual overview of tests performed in the NRLs. This year the survey is undertaken online. Deadline for submission is postponed to 10th April.

The questionnaire can be found here. Should you have any question, please do not hesitate to contact us.
 

♦ 31 March 2015 ♦

The 2015 rabies diagnostic inter-laboratory test will be undertaken on a unique panel of 9 samples. As usual, laboratories will be able to test their performance for 4 techniques: FAT (Fluorescent Antibody Test), RTCIT (Rabies Tissue Culture Infection Test), Conventional RT-PCR and Real-Time RT-PCR. The panel will be sent to laboratories on 1st June 2015. Results will have to be returned to Anses-Nancy before 1st July 2015, along with the answers to the online questionnaires for each technique tested. These questionnaires are used to compare the procedures of laboratories, and to highlight the influence of the variations on the results obtained during this inter-laboratory trial, when applicable. Non EU Member State National Reference Laboratories are allowed to participate to this test under certain conditions. Registration for the inter-laboratory test for rabies diagnosis is now closed. A total of 48 laboratories have registered.
 

♦ 06 March 2015 ♦

The Rabies Laboratory of the Scientific Institute of Public Health (WIV-ISP, Brussels) is officially recognized as the National Reference Centre for Human Rabies (NRC Rabies: financed by the National Institute for health and Invalidity Insurance, RIZIV-INAMI) and the National Reference Laboratory for Animal Rabies (NRL Rabies: recognized by the Federal Agency for the Safety of the Food Chain, FAVV-AFSCA, and OIE). The lab is also recognized by the European Commission to perform rabies serology in pets in the frame of travel. The rabies laboratory is embedded within our clinical laboratory that performs diagnosis of rare, dangerous or vaccine-preventable human infectious diseases (LMM).

Both human and animal rabies diagnosis and surveillance are thus centralized in the same laboratory, which is also tightly associated with the Belgian centre for post exposure prophylaxis against rabies in humans.

Our rabies lab has been around for more than hundred years and was always closely involved in the history of rabies in Belgium. We were implicated in the oral vaccination campaigns in foxes in the eighties and nineties, which led to the official elimination of fox rabies in Belgium in 2001.

History of rabies in Belgium

Our lab performs serological tests by the virus-neutralisation method (RFFIT) in both humans (to validate the efficacy of preventive vaccination and post exposure treatment) and pets (in the framework of pet travel). Our diagnosis and serology methods are accredited according to ISO17025 and ISO15189 standards.

A passive surveillance system for domestic animals and wildlife is maintained in Belgium. Each year, we analyse about 300-400 suspected domestic animals and 20-200 suspected wild animals in the frame of rabies surveillance and to guarantee the country’s rabies-free status.

Our laboratory is involved in several projects concerning prevention, treatment and pathogenesis of rabies:

♦ Use of the rabies model to study the impact of cell death (caspases, RIPK) and inflammation (NF-κB) signalling pathways on the outcome of viral brain infection

♦ Assessment of the efficacy of abbreviated intradermal vaccination schedules (one-day and two-day treatments): several clinical trials are running in collaboration with the Military Hospital Queen Astrid (Brussels) and the Institute of Tropical Medicine (Antwerp)

♦ Exploring and expanding therapeutic uses and applicability of therapeutic heavy-chain derived single variable domains: Nanobodies® (VHH) as a new strategy for prevention and treatment of rabies

The rabies laboratory, embedded within the Viral Disease Service of the institute, is supervised by Dr. Bernard Brochier. Dr. Brochier is a life-long expert in rabies and was actively involved in the fox vaccination and rabies elimination program in Belgium in the past. His current interests involve rabies and emerging zoonoses in wildlife, including tick-borne encephalitis virus and other rodent-borne viruses.

The rabies team is further composed of Dr. Steven Van Gucht (DVM, PhD and head of the Viral Disease Service), Dr. Vanessa Suin (PhD), Magali Wautier (MSc), Dr. Jean Vanderpas (MD, PhD), Dr. Raymond Vanhoof (MD, PhD), ) and 3 laboratory techniciens:  Marie-Louise Blondiau, Sophie Lamoral, and Aurélie Francart. Magda Bégard, Véronique Verhocht and Fabien Berger assist in the administration and call centre. Currently, we also have 2 PhD students (Sanne Terryn, Elodie Kip) working on projects involving rabies prevention, treatment and pathogenesis.

♦ 24 February 2015 ♦

The annual meeting for the EURL for rabies will take place this year in Zagreb, Croatia. The meeting will be held on the same basis than the last one, over 2 half days, on 27th May afternoon and 28th May 2015 morning. Registration is currently ongoing. The agenda will include talks from the National Reference Laboratories and the EURL on molecular biology analysis for rabies diagnosis and the ongoing standardisation of these methods at a European level. The results of the inter-laboratory tests for both diagnosis and biomarker assessment organised by the EURL for rabies in 2014 will be presented, completed with a synthesis of the results of the tests from the former years, and an analysis of the trend of performance over time. Presentations on news and research achievements from some colleagues will also be made during this meeting. On 27th May evening, a dinner will be kindly organised by the Croatian National Reference Laboratory for rabies.

♦ 02 March 2015 ♦

In 2013, the EURL initiated a cross-platform evaluation of the PCR performance of ten commercial SYBR Green® kits ( five two-step kits and five one-step kits) using real-time SYBR Green PCR assays (one-step and two-step methods).   We found that the optimised one-step PCR assays had a higher detection sensitivity than the optimised two-step assays regardless of the machine used as well as the pivotal influence of the thermocycler on PCR performance, as well as that of the master mixes.
The results of the comparison of the two types of methods (one-step versus two-step) of the Real Time SYBR Green® RT-PCR were presented in 2013 during the 6th workshop for Rabies NRLs in Athens, Greece: “Comparison of different commercial SYBR Green® RT-PCR kits” and also in 2014 in the 25th International Meeting of Rabies in the Americas (RITA, Cancun, Mexico). See presentation.
The results of this study are now in open access on the BioMed Research International website. See publication