🚨 New paper in Eurosurveillance - @karatasmustafa.bsky.social
We used shotgun metagenomics on indoor air in a Belgian daycare to track respiratory, enteric & skin viruses.
👉 40/42 samples contained human viruses—even when kids seemed healthy!
📄 Read here: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41000028/

New paper out!

We sampled indoor air for a year in a Belgian daycare and used shotgun metagenomics to track viruses. We recovered many viral genomes of interest.

What would you sample next?

Read at @eurosurveillance.org
@emmanuel-microb.bsky.social, @jellematthijnssens.bsky.social
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New study on reaching people with undiagnosed tuberculosis in Rwanda: “… our results suggest that analyzing satellite imagery may allow the identification of urban areas where inhabitants are at higher risk of tuberculosis.”

One of my favorite #ESCMIDGlobal sessions is "Year in #PublicHealth".
Yi Lang Hsu summarizes outbreaks that occurred in the last year: Mpox, Avian Influenza, Marburg, Oropouche!
#PublicHealthSky #IDsky #ESCMIDGlobal2025

Our patients persecuted; colleagues and public health institutions under attack. Our field needs to rise up & fight back

Silence=Death Redux: Infectious Diseases, Public Health, and the Imperative to Resist

Viewpoint by @ericmeyerowitz.bsky.social & me

OpenAccess: academic.oup.com/cid/advance-...

New #kuleuven study: indoor air sampling to monitor respiratory infections in childcare settings. 🧒🏽🏫 Key findings: 🔬 Sensitive pathogen detection 🌬️ Correlation with CO2 & infection rates 📈 Early outbreak warnings
👇 www.thelancet.com/journals/ebi...
#PublicHealth #Epidemiology #RespiratoryInfections

New publication by Christelle Jouego & cols. maps TB hotspots in Cameroon using OpenStreetMap & WorldPop data. Reveals up to 53% of TB cases go undiagnosed in some regions 🧐. Urgent need to reallocate diagnostic tools where they're needed most. #GlobalHealth #TB www.nature.com/articles/s41...

3️⃣ Scaling up:
A single air sample from a central ventilation shaft could capture infections of many people in a building.
(Michiel Happaerts et al, Indoor Air)

In the future, maybe a small number of busy sentinel sites could be enough to help anticipate and monitor epidemics…

2️⃣ Metagenomics can find unexpected viruses in air. Also viruses associated with skin infections or gastroenteritis.

More in this preprint with the Rega Institute’s Viral Metagenomics Lab:
@karatasmustafa.bsky.social , @jellematthijnssens.bsky.social

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

This builds on previous work at our Clinical Microbiology Lab:

1️⃣ In one study, we found on average 3.9 pathogens in 341 air samples from 21 locations, from bars to care homes.

Takeaways:
- Poor ventilation = more pathogens in air
- Air samples can mirror epidemiology

(Raymenants et al, Nat Comms)

“The results highlight the differing shedding patterns between pathogens, while supporting the use of air pathogen counts and CO2 concentrations to estimate population-level prevalence.”

The relevance of this study and avenues for future research are highlighted in a comment by John Lednicky:

What we tested:
- Air samples from a childcare centre over 5 months
- Used paper tissues from the same children
- Tested for 29 respiratory pathogens

Most infections were detectable in air, sometimes a week before we saw an outbreak!

lancet.com/journals/ebiom/article/PIIS2352-3964(24)00548-6

New study: analysing indoor air to detect outbreaks.

“… Air sampling could provide sensitive, responsive #epidemiology indicators for surveillance of respiratory pathogens…”

See thread for details and previous air sampling work with @emmanuel-microb.bsky.social…

#IDEpi #IDsky #PedsID #KULeuven 🛟

🚨 #PhDPosition Opportunity Alert 🚨
Join the Matthijnssens-lab @KU_Leuven to explore the early-life #virome dynamics and their impact on immunity in infants from Ghana & Zambia! 🌍🧬
📅 Start: June 2025
🔗 kuleuven.be/personeel/jobs…#microbiomem#bioinformaticsc#phageg#NGSGS

It's not so much mutations spontaneously emerging in individuals that is most concerning, but the fact that flu season is ramping up, giving H5N1 more opportunities to mix with human influenza strains, @angierasmussen.bsky.social told me. www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...

IDEpi: a dedicated Bluesky feed for Infectious Disease Epidemiology.

This feed collects posts tagged with #IDEpi or keyword combinations like #IDSky + #EpiSky.
Comments and suggestions welcome!

Access here: bsky.app/profile/did:...

4️⃣ Not large super-spreading events, but many small gatherings caused a surge in COVID-19 transmission on New Year’s Eve (2022).
(Sci Rep)

Of course, the virus was a bigger concern back then. Wishing everyone a happy, festive start to 2025!

Stay tuned as we work to prepare for future pandemics.

3️⃣ Shared showers/toilets increased COVID-19 transmission risk in student residences.

(Vanbesien et al; Arch Pub Health)
archpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13690-022-00966-4

2️⃣ Despite high uptake, the Belgian digital contact tracing app (based on the Google-Apple framework) was much less effective than conventional contact tracing.

(Geenen, Raymenants, et al; Nat Comms)
www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-42518-6

Hello Bluesky! A quick overview of what we learned doing contact tracing for COVID-19 at KU Leuven.

#IDEpi #PublicHealth #EpiSky #IDSky @Emmanuel_microb

1️⃣ Tracing sources of infections (backward contact tracing) could efficiently slow COVID-19 spread.
(Raymenants, Geenen, et al; Nat Comms)

More👇