Laboratory of Clinical Virology, Prof. Marc Van Ranst, University of Leuven

01/01/2015

Happy New Year !! I wish everybody a lot of scientific breakthroughs, less ebola, and lots and lots of love ! :)

18/12/2014

Onze mensen op ebola-missie in Guinee !!
http://nieuws.kuleuven.be/node/14502

15/11/2014

Poliovirus type 2 is already eradicated. Now it becomes very probable that wild-type circulation of poliovirus type 3 has also recently stopped. Two down, one more to go !! :)

Olen M. Kew, PhD1, Stephen L. Cochi, MD2, Hamid S. Jafari, MD3, Steven G.F. Wassilak, MD2, Eric E. Mast, MD2, Ousmane M. Diop, PhD3, Rudolf H. Tangermann, MD3, Gregory L. Armstrong, MD2 (Author affiliations at end of text)

01/11/2014

Je kan 'griepmeter' worden op www.grotegriepmeting.be !

Influenzanet is a system to monitor the activity of influenza-like-illness (ILI) with the aid of volunteers via the internet

09/10/2014

Ebola is a contagious disease, but (luckily) not very contagious compared to many other viral diseases. This figure nicely illustrates the concept of the "basic reproduction number' or R0.

02/10/2014

Let's stay calm ! :)

Guys, I know this ebola thing is scary. But let's be realistic.

Image via .

30/08/2014

This ebola strain is able to also infect medical personnel and scientists at an alarming rate... Five (out of 50) authors of a Science paper on the molecular evolution of this ebola strain have died because of ebola.

Getting published in a journal like Science should be an incredibly exciting time for any researcher. Unfortunately, before the paper “Genomic surveillance elucidates Ebola virus origin and transmission during the 2014 outbreak” could be published online yesterday, 5 of the 50 co-authors fell ill an…

18/07/2014

Many on the ill-fated Malaysia airlines MH17 were on their way to an AIDS conference in Melbourne.
Our thoughts are with their friends and families.

The Malaysia Airlines plane crash in Ukraine has reportedly claimed the lives of some of the world’s top medical researchers, who were heading to Melbourne.

08/07/2014

Variola (smallpox) samples discovered in unsecured storage room at CDC !

Scientists cleaning out an old laboratory on the National Institutes of Health campus in Bethesda, Md., last week came across a startling discovery: Vials labeled "variola" – in other words, smallpox.

Under international convention there are supposed to be only two stashes of this deadly virus: one at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and another at a similar facility in Russia.

The CDC swooped in to collect the vials and carted them off to a secure lab at its Atlanta headquarters.

In a statement Tuesday, the agency said scientists did indeed find smallpox DNA in the vials. Scientists are now testing the sample to see whether any of the smallpox virus is still capable of causing disease. That testing will take two weeks.

The laboratory on the NIH campus had been transferred to the Food and Drug Administration in 1972. It was being cleaned out as the FDA was preparing to move that lab to its main campus.

"There is no evidence that any of the vials labeled variola has been breached," the CDC said in the statement, "and onsite biosafety personnel have not identified any infectious exposure risk to lab workers or the public."

Deadly agents like smallpox are supposed to be contained in high-security laboratories. The lab on the NIH campus did not meet those standards.

In May, the World Health Organization declined to order destruction of the world's remaining stocks of smallpox virus.

"Smallpox was clearly the most serious infectious disease that mankind has endured over history," Dr. D.A. Henderson, who led the international effort that eradicated smallpox in 1977, told NPR's Rob Stein. Henderson thinks the virus should be destroyed, but researchers at the CDC disagree.

The CDC and the FBI are investigating the history of these vials, which apparently date to the 1950s, according to the CDC statement.

09/06/2014

24/05/2014

A map of vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks: Map outbreaks that could be avoided to a greeat extent if all parents would have a minimum of common sense and social/societal responsability and vaccinate their children:
http://www.cfr.org/interactives/GH_Vaccine_Map/

24/05/2014

An instructive video about HPV vaccination...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQSTUIw8_1U