SFU professor unearths the ancient fossil plant history of Burnaby Mountain

Peer-Reviewed Publication

SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: FIG. 4. REPRODUCTIVE PLANT MACROFOSSILS FROM THE SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY EXPOSURE. A, PARTIAL TRILOBED FRUITING BRACT OF PALAEOCARYA CF. P. WOLFEI, SIMILAR TO BRACTS OF LIVING ENGELHARDIA. B, FRUIT VALVE OF THE MALVACEOUS CRAIGIA. C, LIQUIDAMBAR FRUIT CLUSTER SHOWING THE WOODY ELONGATED STYLES OF THE EMBEDDED CAPSULES. D, STERILE FLOWER OF HYDRANGEA. E, FLORAL CALYX OF FLORISSANTIA CF. F. SPEIRII. THE SPECIES IS UNCERTAIN BUT BASED ON THE LARGE SIZE OF THE CALYX (DIAMETER = 51 MM), WHICH IS MOST SIMILAR TO F. SPEIRII. ALL SCALES ARE IN MILLIMETERS. view more 

CREDIT: SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY

New research led by Simon Fraser University paleobotanist Rolf Mathewes provides clues about what plants existed in the Burnaby Mountain area (British Columbia, Canada) 40 million years ago during the late Eocene, when the climate was much warmer than it is today. The results of their plant fossil analysis were recently published in the International Journal of Plant Sciences.

Mathewes as an undergraduate, and his supervisor at the time, professor Robert C. Brooke, found and collected plant fossils from a deposit exposed during the construction of the university in the late 1960s. The fossils were kept at SFU but remained locked away in cabinets for many years until Mathewes returned to the collection as a professor. He dedicates the paper to the memory of Brooke, his late supervisor and mentor.

One of the fossils identified by their colleague David Greenwood, from Brandon University, is of a palm leaf fragment. The team also identified a hydrangea flower and the flower of an extinct plant from the same family as the basswood, a tree native to Eastern North America. A microscopic analysis of fossil pollen extracted from the fine shale also reveals the presence of alders, ferns, elms, sweetgum, and many other plants.

 “These plant fossils tell us the climate was warm temperate to subtropical because of the presence of palms,” says Mathewes, study lead and SFU professor of paleoecology & palynology. “If you wanted an analogue for what the climate was like compared to today, the conditions would be similar to the East Coast of the United States somewhere around Wilmington, North Carolina, where palms are still native today.”  

Study co-author Tammo Reichgelt (University of Connecticut) used new climate modelling techniques to confirm the warmer conditions.

Although planted palms can be found growing in the Lower Mainland today, Mathewes notes that these plants would not survive here on their own as they did in the distant past.

“Even if they flowered and produced seeds, their young seedlings would never be able to compete with the seedlings of Douglas fir and hemlocks and alders that are our native vegetation and probably would die in the first hard frost of winter,” he says.

He explains that most of Burnaby Mountain is comprised of sandstone and gravel but the fossils are only preserved on shale or mudstone. In the late Eocene, Burnaby Mountain had not yet formed and was a floodplain, like the Fraser River Delta, with ponds and river channels with vegetation growing near sea level.

The plants and trees growing on the floodplain deposited their leaves, flowers and pollen into the fine sediment of a shallow lake or pond. Their fossils formed through a process of being compressed under layers of sediment for millions of years.

One of the fossil leaves clearly displays round feeding marks made by an insect, and Mathewes says there is still much to be discovered, identified and studied from the pollen samples and a second fossil deposit site.

Fig. 7. A, Large leaf of cf. Anacardites franklinensis, a species defined by Wolfe from the Eocene Puget Group. B, One of several leaf fragments of an uncertain Myrtaceae (Syzgoides), based on an entire-margined leaf with a strong midvein and thin, closely spaced eucamptodromous secondaries that connect to an intramarginal vein (arrow). C, Unidentified cordate leaf with actinodromous venation, entire margin, and fimbrial vein visible along lower margin, suggestive of Menispermaceae. D, Insect body fossils have not been found in the Burnaby Mountain sediments, but some examples of insect leaf damage are present, like this unidentified dicot leaf with rounded skeletonized feeding spots. All scales are in millimeters.

Fig. 6. Selected dicot leaves. A, Dryophyllum pugetensis leaf confirming craspedodromous venation, with teeth concentrated in distal portion of lamina, and showing a slight trend to falcate curvature. B, Leaf of Platanus with distinctive platanaceous teeth at leaf tip. C, Basal portion of cf. Acer leaf, with long petiole and basal actinodromous primary venation. D, Leaf of cf. Alnus, craspedodromous with two tooth sizes. Alder pollen is also present. E, Leaf of cf. Rhamnus, with dense apically curving semicraspedodromous secondary veins. This leaf closely matches morphology of extant Rhamnus purshianus but does not show the minute teeth at the leaf edge. All scales are in millimeters.

CREDIT

Simon Fraser University

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JOURNAL

International Journal of Plant Sciences

DOI

10.1086/724156 

ARTICLE TITLE

Plant Megafossils, Palynomorphs, and Paleoenvironment from the Late Middle to Late Eocene Burnaby Mountain Flora, Huntingdon Formation, British Columbia, Canada

Oldest bat skeletons ever found

described from Wyoming fossils

52-million-year-old fossils support idea that bats diversified rapidly on multiple continents during the Eocene

Peer-Reviewed Publication

AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

 

IMAGE: A PHOTO OF ONE OF THE TWO NEWLY DESCRIBED BAT SKELETONS REPRESENTING ICARONYCTERIS GUNNELLI. THIS SPECIMEN, THE HOLOTYPE, IS NOW IN THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY’S RESEARCH COLLECTIONS. view more 

CREDIT: MICK ELLISON/©AMNH

Scientists have described a new species of bat based on the oldest bat skeletons ever recovered. The study on the extinct bat, which lived in Wyoming about 52 million years ago, supports the idea that bats diversified rapidly on multiple continents during this time. Led by researchers at the American Museum of Natural History and Naturalis Biodiversity Center in the Netherlands, the study is published today in the journal PLOS ONE.

There are more than 1,460 living species of bats found in nearly every part of the world, with the exception of the polar regions and a few remote islands. In the Green River Formation of Wyoming—a remarkable fossil deposit from the early Eocene—scientists have uncovered over 30 bat fossils in the last 60 years, but until now they were all thought represent the same two species.

“Eocene bats have been known from the Green River Formation since the 1960s. But interestingly, most specimens that have come out of that formation were identified as representing a single species, Icaronycteris index, up until about 20 years ago, when a second bat species belonging to another genus was discovered,” said study co-author Nancy Simmons, curator-in-charge of the Museum’s Department of Mammalogy, who helped describe that second species in 2008. “I always suspected that there must be even more species there.”

In recent years, scientists from the Naturalis Biodiversity Center started looking closely at Icaronycteris index by collecting measurements and other data from museum specimens.

“Paleontologists have collected so many bats that have been identified as Icaronycteris index, and we wondered if there were actually multiple species among these specimens,” said Tim Rietbergen, an evolutionary biologist at Naturalis. “Then we learned about a new skeleton that diverted our attention.”

The exceptionally well-preserved skeleton was collected by a private collector in 2017 and purchased by the Museum. When researchers compared the fossil to Rietbergen’s expansive dataset, it clearly stood out as a new species. A second fossil skeleton discovered in the same quarry in 1994 and in the collections of the Royal Ontario Museum was also identified as this new species. The researchers gave these fossils the species name Icaronycteris gunnelli in honor of Gregg Gunnell, a Duke University paleontologist who died in 2017 and made extensive contributions to the understanding of fossil bats and evolution.

Although there are fossil bat teeth from Asia that are slightly older, the two I. gunnelli fossils represent the oldest bat skeletons ever found.

“The Fossil Lake deposits of the Green River Formation are simply amazing because the conditions that created the paper-thin limestone layers also preserved nearly everything that settled to the lake’s bottom,” said Arvid Aase, park manager and curator at the Fossil Butte National Monument, in Wyoming. “One of these bat specimens was found lower in the section than all other bats, making this species older than any of the other bat species recovered from this deposit."

While the I. gunnelli skeletons are the oldest bat fossils from this site, they are not the most primitive, supporting the idea that Green River bats evolved separately from other Eocene bats around the world.

“This is a step forward in understanding what happened in terms of evolution and diversity back in the early days of bats,” Simmons said.

 

ABOUT THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY (AMNH)

The American Museum of Natural History, founded in 1869 to advance research in science and education, is one of the world’s preeminent scientific, educational, and cultural institutions. The Museum encompasses more than 40 permanent exhibition halls, galleries for temporary exhibitions, the Rose Center for Earth and Space including the Hayden Planetarium, and the Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation, opening May 4. The Museum’s scientists draw on a world-class permanent collection of more than 34 million specimens and artifacts, some of which are billions of years old, and on one of the largest natural history libraries in the world. Through its Richard Gilder Graduate School, the Museum offers two of the only free-standing, degree-granting programs of their kind at any museum in the U.S.: the Ph.D. program in Comparative Biology and the Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) Earth Science residency program, whose graduates make up approximately half of New York City’s certified Earth Science teachers. Visit amnh.org for more information.

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JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0283505 

ARTICLE TITLE

The oldest known bat skeletons and their implications for Eocene chiropteran diversification

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

12-Apr-2023

Sex of blood donor has no effect on recipient survival

Innovative clinical trial answers long-standing question and paves the way for lower-cost pragmatic trials

Peer-Reviewed Publication

THE OTTAWA HOSPITAL

 

IMAGE: DR. DEAN FERGUSSON HOLDING A UNIT OF BLOOD view more 

CREDIT: THE OTTAWA HOSPITAL

A large clinical trial of more than 8,700 patients published in the New England Journal of Medicine concluded that the sex of a donor has no effect on the survival of recipients of red blood cell transfusions.

“Some observational studies had suggested female donor blood might be linked with a higher risk of death among recipients compared to male donor blood, but our clinical trial found that isn’t the case,” said co-lead author Dr. Dean Fergusson, a senior scientist at The Ottawa Hospital, Director of the hospital’s Clinical Epidemiology Program and professor at the University of Ottawa.

The possible impact of the sex of a blood donor on recipient survival has been an unanswered question in transfusion medicine since 2015, when the American National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute identified it as a research priority. Some evidence suggested that sex-related differences such as hormone levels in male and female blood might affect recipient survival, but the results of observational studies have been conflicting.

“To answer this question definitively we needed a large, randomized clinical trial, but those studies are incredibly expensive,” said Dr. Michaël Chassé, co-lead author of the study and intensivist at Centre hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal and associate professor at Université de Montréal. “By embedding this trial in real-world practice and using practical methods, we answered this question for a fraction of what a trial would normally cost.”

The research team estimates that using typical trial methods, this trial would have cost $9 million, but with their innovative approach, it only cost $300,000. The approach involved enrolling every adult patient at The Ottawa Hospital who might need a transfusion, randomizing them to receive male or female blood, and then collecting data from existing hospital databases and provincial registries. As male and female blood were considered equivalent treatments, patients did not need to provide written consent to join the trial, but were given the option to opt out after the first transfusion. With this pragmatic approach, the team was able to enroll 8,719 participants into their double-blind, randomized trial in just over two years.

The study did not include patients without an Ontario Health Insurance Plan number, those who were massively bleeding and needed blood right away, and those with a complex antibody profile which made blood unit matching difficult.

Study participants were randomly assigned to receive either male or female donor blood at all visits to The Ottawa Hospital during the study period. Eighty per cent of patients received their first transfusion while they were an inpatient, and 42 per cent of those received it during surgery.

Patient characteristics, laboratory and clinical data, and blood bank data were obtained from The Ottawa Hospital Data Warehouse. Blood donor data from Canadian Blood Services was linked with hospital data and health administrative data at ICES.

The study found no statistically significant differences in overall survival between recipients of male donor blood and recipients of female donor blood.

“Blood is the most common life-saving treatment given in hospital,” said Dr. Jason Acker, senior scientist at Canadian Blood Services. “As a blood provider, we were happy to help answer this very important question in transfusion medicine. We hope the findings encourage all eligible donors to continue to donate.”

Full reference: The effect of donor sex on recipient mortality in transfusion. Michaël Chassé, Dean A Fergusson, Alan Tinmouth, Jason P Acker, Iris Perelman, Angie Tuttle, Shane English, Steven Hawken, Alan J Forster, Nadine Shehata, Kednapa Thavorn, Kumanan Wilson, Nancy Cober, Heather Maddison, Melanie Tokessy. New England Journal of Medicine. April 12, 2023.

Funding: This study was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. All research at The Ottawa Hospital is also enabled by generous donors to The Ottawa Hospital Foundation. 

Core resources: Ottawa Methods Centre, The Ottawa Hospital Data Warehouse, ICES

About The Ottawa Hospital 
The Ottawa Hospital is one of Canada’s top learning and research hospitals, where excellent care is inspired by research and driven by compassion. As the third-largest employer in Ottawa, our support staff, researchers, nurses, physicians, and volunteers never stop seeking solutions to the most complex health-care challenges. Our multi-campus hospital, affiliated with the University of Ottawa, attracts some of the most influential scientific minds from around the world. Backed by generous support from the community, we are committed to providing the world-class, compassionate care we would want for our loved ones. www.ohri.ca

About the University of Ottawa
The University of Ottawa is home to over 54,000 students, faculty and staff, who live, work and study in both French and English. Our campus is a crossroads of cultures and ideas, where bold minds come together to inspire game-changing ideas. We are one of Canada’s top 10 research universities—our professors and researchers explore new approaches to today’s challenges. One of a handful of Canadian universities ranked among the top 200 in the world, we attract exceptional thinkers and welcome diverse perspectives from across the globe. www.uottawa.ca

About the CRCHUM

The University of Montreal Hospital Research Centre (CRCHUM) is one of North America’s leading hospital research centres. It strives to improve adult health through a research continuum covering such disciplines as the fundamental sciences, clinical research and public health. Over 2,300 people work at the CRCHUM, including more than 500 researchers and more than 520 graduate students. chumontreal.qc.ca/crchum @CRCHUM

About Université de Montréal

Deeply rooted in Montreal and dedicated to its international mission, Université de Montréal is one of the top universities in the French-speaking world. Founded in 1878, Université de Montréal today has 13 faculties and schools, and together with its two affiliated schools, HEC Montréal and Polytechnique Montréal, constitutes the largest centre of higher education and research in Québec and one of the major centres in North America. It brings together 2,400 professors and researchers and has more than 67,000 students. umontreal.ca

ICES is an independent, non-profit research institute that uses population-based health information to produce knowledge on a broad range of health care issues. Our unbiased evidence provides measures of health system performance, a clearer understanding of the shifting health care needs of Ontarians, and a stimulus for discussion of practical solutions to optimize scarce resources. ICES knowledge is highly regarded in Canada and abroad, and is widely used by government, hospitals, planners, and practitioners to make decisions about care delivery and to develop policy. In October 2018, the institute formerly known as the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences formally adopted the initialism ICES as its official name. For the latest ICES news, follow us on Twitter: @ICESOntario

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JOURNAL

New England Journal of Medicine

DOI

10.1056/NEJMoa2211523 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Randomized controlled/clinical trial

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

The effect of donor sex on recipient mortality in transfusion

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

12-Apr-2023

Timing of snowshoe hare winter color swap may leave them exposed in changing climate, study finds

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

 

IMAGE: SNOWSHOE HARE IN WINTER COAT IN A SNOWY LANDSCAPE IN KLUANE, YUKON, CANADA. PURE WHITE WINTER COAT PROVIDES CAMOUFLAGE AGAINST SNOW, WHICH REDUCES RISK OF BEING SEEN AND CAUGHT BY PREDATORS. view more 

CREDIT: ALICE KENNEY

Like many animals in the far north, snowshoe hares change their coats from brown to white each autumn. Come winter, these all-white hares are harder for predators to spot against the snowy landscape, helping ensure their survival.

But as global warming reduces snowfall in the region, will the hares’ seasonal color swap continue to keep them safe?

Scientists from the University of Florida and Canada are beginning to answer that question. Their new study, which used 44 years of data on snowshoe hares in Canada’s Yukon Territory, shows that as the region has warmed, hares are waiting longer to turn pure white.

However, the data also suggest that waiting too long can be deadly. The scientists found that hares that were more brown than white in autumn were less likely to survive the winter  

“When it comes to the switch from brown to white, which we call molting, timing is everything. We can see in this study that climate change is making it harder for the hares to get that timing just right.” said Madan Oli, first author of the study and a professor in the UF/IFAS wildlife ecology and conservation department.  “Hares begin to change color based on environmental cues such as temperature and snow depth, but the change doesn’t happen overnight. The whole molting process takes about a month. So, if hares are beginning to molt later in the year, there is a greater chance they will not be fully white by the time their environment is white. These hares are then more vulnerable to predators.”

Snowshoe hares are what ecologists call a keystone species because so many other animals depend on them for food, said Charles Krebs, senior author of the study and a professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia.

If the snowshoe hare population takes a nosedive, this could affect the entire ecosystem, he said.

“Practically everything eats snowshoe hares in the boreal forest. A big change in the number that survive the winter impacts their ability to replenish themselves over the summer breeding season, which could disrupt the whole food web,” Krebs said. The boreal forest, or taiga, rings the norther part of the globe and includes parts of Alaska, Canada, Europe and Asia. 

Snowshoe hares are among 21 bird and mammal species in boreal forest that turn white for winter, which scientists call seasonal molting. This study is the first to track how seasonal molting has shifted with rising global temperatures.

The decades of data collection by Krebs and colleagues also makes the study unique, Krebs said.

“When you look over a forty-four-year span, you can really document a pattern. This study demonstrates the value and importance of long-term ecological monitoring,” Krebs said.

Between 1977 and 2021, Krebs and his collaborators went to the Kluane National Park and Reserve in Canada’s Yukon Territory each autumn and spring to study snowshoe hares. In the remote, often extremely cold wilderness they trapped snowshoe hares, recorded the percentage of white and brown in each hare’s coat, tagged each hare (or noted if it was already tagged) and set it free.

The researchers recorded observations for nearly 4,500 hares, with some caught multiple times over the years. Oli, who specializes in evaluating animal populations from a statistical and modeling perspective, and then wildlife ecology doctoral candidate Vratika Chaudhary, analyzed this massive dataset. The current study presents the results of that analysis.  

The team isn’t done studying snowshoe hares in the Yukon, Krebs said. The scientists are currently recording the hare coat color and behavior using motion activated cameras. Images captures by these cameras will show how much — or how little — the hares coats are helping them match their environment in real time.

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences

DOI

10.1098/rspb.2022.1421 

ARTICLE TITLE

Does coat colour influence survival? A test in a cyclic population of snowshoe hares

A mismatched snowshoe hare in winter coat in a snow-free landscape in Kluane, Yukon, Canada. Pure white winter coat against snow-free landscape makes snowshoe hares easily detectable by predators, which can reduce their survival during the winter. The study found, however, that hares that wait longer to turn white in autumn face the greatest chance of being eaten by predators during the winte

White snowshoe hare.

CREDIT

Photo credit: Lance Goodwin

Brown snowshoe hare. Hares turn brown for the summer when the snows recede.

Brown snowshoe hare. Hares turn brown for the summer when the snows recede.

CREDIT

Photo credit: Alice Kenney

Contaminated drinking water alerts cause up to 10% school absence rates in Jackson, Mississippi

A Brown-led research team compared boil water alerts and unexcused absence rates in Jackson’s public schools to show the wide-ranging negative effects of water contamination on children’s health.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BROWN UNIVERSITY

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — When a team led by researchers from Brown University’s School of Public Health tried to gather data about the health effects of the longstanding water contamination crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, little was available, even on the toxicity of the water supply.

So they turned to two sources that were accessible — school attendance records and public safety alerts that advised residents to boil water before use.

Now, the team’s analysis of this information in a study published in Nature Water shows how boil water alerts significantly disrupted student learning: Each time an alert was issued, unexcused absence rates in Jackson’s public schools increased between 1% and 10%.

Chronic school absenteeism impacts not only a child’s academic record, but also their health and well-being, said lead author Erica Walker, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Brown. Research shows that chronic absenteeism is associated with increased likelihood of poverty and decreases in mental and physical health. 

“We’re talking about much larger repercussions than gastrointestinal illness from drinking unsafe water,” Walker said. “These findings show how chronic exposure to contaminated water over time can negatively affect the trajectory of a child’s life.”

The water crisis in Jackson has made global headlines as a major environmental catastrophe, impacting the health and well-being of residents. The researchers focused on the city’s most vulnerable population: its children.

To conduct the study, the team used data on boil water alerts issued by the City of Jackson’s Water and Sewer Business Administration Office between 2015 and 2021, daily school attendance data from Jackson’s Public School District and demographic data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.

The data showed that each time a boil water alert was issued, unexcused absence rates increased by 1 to 10%.

They also showed decreases in unexcused absences in schools where much of the student body receives free and reduced lunches — likely, Walker said, because the water contamination disrupts at-home meal preparation, so families may instead count on schools to safely provide lunch for children that day.

As the director of the Community Noise Lab at Brown, Walker originally wanted to study the effects of noise pollution on public health in Jackson. However, when the community made clear that the water contamination was a more pressing concern, Walker shifted focus.

She organized a team, which included graduate students from Brown, to set up mobile laboratories across the city to test tap water quality — work that remains ongoing. Separately, Walker partnered with researchers from the University of Mississippi, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston University and Salem State University to learn more about the effects of contaminated water on community health. They recognized that the ubiquity of boil water alerts would make them an accessible metric that would be understandable to the public.

In the study, the researchers concluded that their analysis highlights the urgency of addressing the root causes of the poor water quality in Jackson. They provide suggestions for how municipalities can more effectively spread the word about contaminated water, including social media posts, voicemails or conducting door-to-door outreach when resources enable it. They also suggested that the Mississippi Department of Health publish a sample press release for local water systems that includes information about the cause of the boil water alert, the population and public schools impacted, and what precautions to take.

The team said the findings could benefit other cities struggling with poor water infrastructure and shed light on the many issues directly and indirectly caused by boil water alerts. Team members from MIT created a data visualization to engage the community both within Jackson and across the world about the research findings.

A personal connection to a community project

This issue is personal for Walker, who grew up in Jackson. She said she does not remember hearing about boil water alerts when she was a child. Yet in 2020 alone, Walker said, the City of Jackson issued approximately 500 boil water advisories because of unsafe drinking water. These interruptions ranged from a few hours to weeks long.

In a commentary for Nature Water that accompanied the study, Walker imagined what it would be like to live with the water crisis in Jackson.

“When a boil water advisory is issued, families with school-aged children living in the impacted communities must boil their water before any consumption, making necessary school preparation chores that we normally take for granted like brushing teeth, taking medications, and preparing meals difficult, if not impossible,” Walker wrote.

Walker’s essay explored her nostalgia for the Jackson of her youth, and her feelings of survivor’s guilt. She wrote, “Would I be who I am now if I lived in the Jackson that exists today?”

Walker said that the team helped train community members as well as students at the Piney Woods School, a historically Black co-educational private boarding school in Mississippi, how to test water for contaminants. As next steps, the team hopes to use the information from the mobile testing labs to examine the biological effects of contaminated water. They created an activity book for children and adults to explain the current water situation in Jackson and how drinking water comes from its source — “so that the next time people get a boil water notice, they’ll have a better understanding of what it means and how it affects them,” Walker said.

“Hopefully,” she said, “this community research partnership will lead to education, empowerment and advocacy around the issue of contaminated water and how it impacts public health.”

The research was supported in part by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Carl Kawaja and Wendy Holcombe Endowed Fund.

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JOURNAL

Nature Water

DOI

10.1038/s44221-023-00062-z 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Meta-analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Boil water alerts and their impact on the unexcused absence rate in public schools in Jackson, Mississippi.

Diphtheria outbreak – updates from Europe, UK, Germany, Austria

Reports and Proceedings

EUROPEAN SOCIETY OF CLINICAL MICROBIOLOGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES

**Note: the release below from the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID 2023, Copenhagen, 15-18 April). Please credit the conference if you use this story**

Various European countries experienced outbreaks of diphtheria mostly linked to incoming migrants.

Europe 

Dr Helena Seth-Smith (University of Zurich), Dr Sylvain Brisse (Institut Pasteur - Paris (France) and collaborators from across Europe including the European Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC) assessed cases of diphtheria in migrants that had arrived in 10 European countriesSwitzerland (52 cases), Germany (118), UK (59), Austria (69), France (30), Belgium (21), Norway (8), The Netherlands (5), Italy (3), and Spain (1).

For their short report, click here

Dr Helena Seth-Smith, University of Zurich, Swtizerland. E) hsethsmith@imm.uzh.ch

Dr Sylvain Brisse, Institut Pasteur, Paris, France. T) +33 6 77 94 65 34

E) sylvain.brisse@pasteur.fr

This press release is based on abstract 2670 at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) annual meeting. The material has been peer reviewed by the congress selection committee.  The research has been not yet been submitted to a medical journal for publication.

For full poster, click here

UK

Linked to an increase in migrant arrivals via small boat in the Summer of 2022, the UK experienced a sharp increase in diphtheria cases caused by toxigenic Corynebacterium diphtheriae last year, recording 73 when the annual average for previous years (including cases due to toxigenic C. ulcerans) was 12 cases. A further single case has been recorded in 2023.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has two abstracts and posters containing all the relevant information about the outbreak (see links below) Steps taken by UK health authorities included recommending mass administration of antibiotic prophylaxis and vaccination in initial reception centres and other accommodation settings for recent arrivals. UKHSA preliminary data as of 18 January 2023 estimates approximately 40% and 88% of eligible arrivals received prophylactic antibiotics and vaccination, respectively, since implementation.

For further information on diphtheria in the UK, please contact the UKHSA Press Office. T) +44 20 7654 8400 E) ukhsa-pressoffice@ukhsa.gov.uk 

Alternative contact Tony Kirby in the ECCMID Media Centre. T) +44 7834 385827 E) tony.kirby@tonykirby.com

This press release is based on abstract 5308 and late breaker abstract LB103 at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) annual meeting. The material has been peer reviewed by the congress selection committee.  The research has been not yet been submitted to a medical journal for publication.

For full 5308 abstract click here, for full poster click here

For full LB103 abstract click here, for full poster click here

Twitter (for when embargo lifts): @escmid #ECCMID2023

Germany

In Germany, experts are continuing to track an outbreak of imported diphtheria that began in Summer 2022, and as of March 2023 affected 169 migrants that had arrived in Germany, mostly from Afghanistan and Syria. This is despite the fact that diphtheria incidence and vaccination coverage in Afghanistan and Syria has remained mostly unchanged over the last few years

Whole genome sequencing and phylogenetic analysis at the National Consiliary Laboratory for Diphtheria (Oberschleissheim, Germany) and migration route analysis at the Robert Koch Institute, Berlin, Germany, suggests that migrants affected had acquired toxigenic Corynebacterium diphtheriae neither in their home country nor in Germany, but in between while migrating – mainly along the Balkan route which includes, among other countries, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, and Slovenia.

Franziska Badenschier, based at the Department for Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the Robert Koch Institute, and her colleagues were able to detect this outbreak within six weeks of the first cases being reported. It then became clear that this outbreak in Germany was part of an international outbreak in Europe.

Badenschier also explains that some cases were initially thought to be mpox, until testing dismissed this and confirmed the cases as diphtheria. She and her colleagues conclude that, for better and more timely diagnosis of diphtheria, clinicians, microbiologists, and institutions working with migrants shall raise awareness and intensify sample collection from wounds with subsequent laboratory diagnostics.

Since the outbreak is ongoing and the sources of it have not been identified yet, Badenschier and her co-authors suggest active case finding and outbreak detection in countries along the Balkan route.

Franziska Badenschier, Department for Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Robert Koch Institute, Berlin, Germany. T) +49 (0)30 18754-2069 E) badenschierf@rki.de

This press release is based on late breaker abstract LB096 at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) annual meeting. The material has been peer reviewed by the congress selection committee.  The research has been not yet been submitted to a medical journal for publication.

 For full poster, click here

Austria

 

Population study shows one third of people not adequately protected against diphtheria

Tests on blood samples of some 16,000 people in Austria show one third of the population have insufficient immunity against diphtheria. The research is presented at this year’s European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID 2023, Copenhagen, 15-18 April) and is by Prof Ursula Wiedermann-Schmidt and Angelika Wagner, Institute of Specific Prophylaxis and Tropical Medicine, Medical University of Vienna, Australia, and colleagues. 

Various European countries, including the UK, Germany and Austria, reported an unusual increase in diphtheria cases in 2022, with around 80% of these cases in migrants arriving in those countries from countries such as Syria and Afghanistan.  Austria reported 62 cases of diphtheria in 2022. The authors, concerned about possible onward transmission of this disease among the general population, aimed to estimate the level of immunity (seroprotection) against diphtheria among people living in Austria.

The authors analysed antibody concentrations against diphtheria toxoid from all individuals requesting voluntary antibody testing at the Austrian reference laboratory at the Institute of Specific Prophylaxis and Tropical Medicine (ISPTM) at the Medical University of Vienna between March 1, 2010 and January 31, 2022.  Individuals requesting such testing are usually doing so to check their immunity to see if they need a booster to maintain protection. 

In total, the authors included diphtheria-toxoid (DT) specific antibody concentration results from 15 852 individuals and of those 12 539 individuals also requested determination of tetanus-toxoid (TT) specific antibodies. Individuals requesting antibody testing were mainly located in the eastern Austrian provinces (Table 1), with around half the total participants coming from the Vienna Province. Antibody concentrations of under 0.01 IU/mL were considered as non-protective; between 0.01 and 0.1 IU/mL as inadequately protective and 0.1 IU/mL and above as adequately protective.

When looked at as three distinct age groups, the results showed individuals aged 60 years and over had the lowest antibody concentrations compared to those under 15 years and those between 15 and 60 years (Figure 2). Those aged under 15 years also had lower protection when compared with those aged 15-60 years. Participants aged above 60 years had the highest proportion of non-protected (4.8%) and insufficiently protected individuals (40.7%) (Figure 3).

Overall, 33% of individuals lacked seroprotection against diphtheria (Figure 3, Table 3). When stratified further according to age (0-6 years 6-15 years, 15-25, 25-35, 35-45, 45-55, 55-65, 65-75, and above 75 years) and sex, the data showed those aged 6-15 years and age groups 55 years and over as having the lowest protection.

Regarding tetanus antibody levels, young individuals had lowest median tetanus antibody concentrations (compared to 15-60 years old and 60 years and over). Interestingly, tetanus levels did not differ between the 15-60 years group and those over 60 years old.

The authors conclude: “Our data show insufficient seroprotection against diphtheria in all age groups, while seroprotection rate against tetanus is higher throughout all age groups. Thus, awareness for regular booster vaccination with combination vaccines (including diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough) needs to be urgently increased as recommended every 10 years (5 years in those aged over 60 years), according to the Austrian National Immunization Plan. The fact that tetanus antibody levels and seroprotection are generally higher and longer lasting, illustrates the necessity to reintroduce of monovalent diphtheria vaccines for diphtheria catch-up vaccination. In addition, the use of higher diphtheria vaccine doses - as used for primary immunisation – for adult booster vaccinations, might be an option to close gaps in diphtheria seroprotection.”

Prof Ursula Wiedermann-Schmidt, Institute of Specific Prophylaxis and Tropical Medicine, Medical University of Vienna, Austria.  T) +43 1 40160 38290 E) ursula.wiedermann-schmidt@meduniwien.ac.at

Angelika Wagner, Institute of Specific Prophylaxis and Tropical Medicine, Medical University of Vienna, Austria. Please email to arrange interview. E)

This press release is based on abstract 6915 (Late breaker LB119) at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) annual meeting. The material has been peer reviewed by the congress selection committee.  The research has been not yet been submitted to a medical journal for publication.

For full abstract click here

For full poster click here