Weekly releases (1997–2007) - Volume 6, Issue 39, 26 September 2002

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA, http://www.efsa.eu.int) (1,2, and references therein), held its inaugural management board meeting in Brussels on 18-19 September 2002. The meeting formally marked the establishment of the EFSA, and the chairman and two vice chairwomen were appointed. David Byrne, European Commissioner for Health and Consumer Protection, outlined the next stages needed to build up this authority, which will provide independent scientific advice on all matters that have a direct or indirect impact on food safety in Europe.

Over the summer of 2002, the incidence of human West Nile virus (WNV) infection in the United States (US) increased. Viral circulation and human disease is now reported by previously unaffected US states, as well as Canada. In addition, an association with a poliomyelitis-like syndrome and new modes of transmissions have been described. This report aims to summarise the above, and to discuss the European perspective.

Globally, 2.5 billion people live in areas where dengue viruses are transmitted. The disease is now endemic in more than 100 countries in Africa, the Americas, the eastern Mediterranean, South East Asia, and the Western Pacific. South East Asia and the western Pacific are most seriously affected (1). It is estimated that 50 million dengue infections occur each year, with 500 000 cases of dengue haemorrhagic fever (DHF) and at least 12 000 deaths, mainly among children. Only a small proportion of these cases are reported to the World Health Organization (WHO).

A paper published in the British Medical Journal has provided new information on the prevalence of preclinical variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) in the United Kingdom (UK) (1,2). A distinctive feature of vCJD is the widespread distribution of an abnormal prion protein in peripheral lymphoid tissue (3,4), which may be detectable before any symptoms develop (5). The authors looked retrospectively for the presence of abnormal prion protein in 8318 appendectomy and tonsillectomy samples and found one positive appendix. It is not known if an asymptomatic person with detectable abnormal prion protein will go on to develop vCJD but, as discussed in the paper, 19 of 20 appendixes removed at autopsy from patients with vCJD have shown accumulation of abnormal prion protein, as did the appendixes removed from two patients prior to disease onset (5). Whilst the paper does report the first estimate of the prevalence of abnormal prion protein based on population testing, larger studies are needed to provide a more precise estimate.

Risky sexual behaviour and the disproportionate burden of STIs in certain population subgroups across Europe was a strong message emerging from the 18th Congress on Sexually Transmitted Infections (IUSTI-EUROPE 2002), held on the 12-14 September in Vienna, Austria. Complete conference programme and abstracts are available at reference 1, and will shortly be available online at http://www.iusti-europe-2002.org/).