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ISO 15189:2022 Q&A (Thursday)

The Arenaviridae have the dubious distinction of containing among their members one of greatest proportions of hazard group 4 viruses of any recognised taxonomic family. These viruses cause persistent asymptomatic infections in their rodent reservoirs, however zoonotic spill over often results in viral haemorrhagic fever (VHF) and high mortality. Transmission to humans occurs via contact with infected rodent excreta, through contaminated food and inhalation of aerosols. Human to human transmission also occurs. In sub-Sharan West Africa, Lassa virus (LASV) has been identified as a VHF since 1969 and is endemic over much of rural Nigeria, the countries of Mano River Union, Ghana, Togo and Benin.

From a global health security perspective, it is of significant international interest since it the most commonly imported VHF into non-endemic countries. In nearly every imported circumstance, the cryptic nature of Lassa fever and related difficulties in diagnosis, places enormous demand on clinical, laboratory and public health resources of the recipient country. Given our current understanding of LASV and other evolving members of the genus, attention should be focused on other new and emerging mammarenaviruses which have similar incubation times and could result in similar human disease with a propensity to overburden public health systems.

I wish to offer a practical guide to working with the Human Tissue Authority.



I will provide examples of what to do and how to do it when issues arise



I will take you through the paperwork involved

I will describe how best to approach HTA reportable incidents

I will take you through how to prepare for the HTA inspection

This will be a very hands on guide and strongly welcome participation from the audience.

Meet the Examiner Session

Meet the Microbiology Experts

National Point-of-Care Strategy

Increasing antimicrobial resistance observed globally in key Gram-negative bacteria and failure of the antimicrobial development pipeline to keep up has left clinicians with few remaining treatment options. This presentation will: i) highlight the current gaps in our antimicrobial armamentarium (with a focus on the World Health Organisation critical priority pathogens); ii) give an overview of new antimicrobials that have reached phase 3 clinical trials and other therapeutic approaches currently in the pipeline; and iii) share experience from the reference laboratory.

This lecture will overview previous viral pandemics affecting humans and highlight lessons learned (or not). This lecture will provide the audience with background information relevant to the two subsequent talks on pandemics currently affecting and what might come next. At the end of this talk the audience will have knowledge on some major pathogenic viruses that have impacted hugely on the human population including:

Smallpox; influenza; polio; yellow fever; HIV and Ebola that bring us up to the novel coronavirus outbreaks that have plagued mankind during more recent years.

Pandemics Present

Chronic lung infection is the leading cause of morbidity and early mortality for people with cystic fibrosis (pwCF). Microbiological surveillance to detect lung pathogens is recommended as best practise in CF patient care. Here we studied pathogen detection in forty pwCF over several years. We found that microbiological culture, the diagnostic gold standard, was significantly disparate to targeted culture-independent approaches for detection and determination of chronic infection status of two important pathogens in CF. Pathogen detection was significantly lower by culture and consequently infection status was also misclassified in the majority of cases.

In particular, the extent of chronic infection by both Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus not realised with culture was striking. Our findings have implications for the development of infection and clinical care of pwCF. Future longitudinal studies with greater patient numbers will be needed to establish the full extent of the clinical implications indicated from this study.