Eurosurveillance - Volume 13, Issue 9, 28 February 2008

Five cases of measles were reported to the Department of Epidemiology in Denmark between mid-January and early February, 2008. The cluster involved four adults aged between 23 and 39 years and an infant. All cases resided in the greater Copenhagen area. Three cases were unvaccinated, one was vaccinated with two doses, and in one case the vaccination status is not yet known.

We describe the first outbreak of non-typable methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus on a surgical ward in the Netherlands in June 2007. Nine cases of infection and/or colonisation were found among patients and healthcare workers.

A family outbreak of gastroenteritis caused by Campylobacter coli occurred in May 2006 in Bielsko-Biala, in the south of Poland. Four members of a family had non-bloody diarrhea and abdominal cramps. C. coli were isolated in three of the four patients. PFGE and PCR-RFLP-flaA patterns confirmed the link between cases, showing the usefulness of these methods in outbreak investigation. At the same time, the epidemiological and environmental investigations of this outbreak were very limited and did not provide enough evidence to identify the source of infection, and thus to support the hypothesis formulated by the local epidemiologist. It is necessary to improve surveillance of campylobacteriosis mainly by multidisciplinary training of epidemiologists, microbiologists and general practitioners.

In a recent article, De Schrijver et al. described an outbreak of Verocytotoxin-producing Escherichia coli, syn. Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC), linked to the consumption of ice cream produced at a farm in the province of Antwerp, Belgium. Interestingly, the outbreak was identified through the time-clustering of patients who had developed haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS) and from whom STEC O145 was isolated.

We agree with the authors that active surveillance of haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS) patients allows the detection of outbreaks of virulent STEC strains and that underascertainement of verocytotoxin-producing E. coli (VTEC) is explained by the non-routine practice of culturing stools, by the under-use of sorbitol-MacConkey (SMAC) agar, and by the fact that most clinical laboratories do not test for these micro-organisms in routine gastroenteritis samples.

A selection of recent articles from national infectious disease bulletins around Europe

An erratum for the article 'Measles outbreak in Switzerland - an update relevant for the European football championship (EURO 2008)'.