Leishmania infantum in free-ranging hares, Spain, 2004-2010

Iberian hares (Lepus granatensis) were recently deemed responsible for an outbreak of human leishmaniasis affecting metropolitan Madrid, Spain. However, the reservoir potential of hares in Europe is poorly known. We report a retrospective survey on Leishmania infantum, the causal agent of zoonotic endemic leishmaniasis in the Mediterranean basin, infection status of Iberian, European (Le. europaeus) and Broom (Le. castroviejoi) hares in Spain. Spleen samples from 94 hares were tested by polymerase chain reaction. Sequencing and restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) assays were performed on positive samples and RFLP patterns compared with those of strains reported in the scientific literature. DNA prevalence in hare spleen samples was 43.6% (95% confidence interval: 33.6-53.6). In all six regions studied at least one positive sample was found. RFLP revealed existence of specific hare strains of L. infantum differing from those reported in wild carnivores in Spain. The widespread presence of L. infantum in the most abundant Spanish hare species and the recent evidence of the ability of naturally infected hares to transmit the pathogen to Phlebotomus perniciosus, its main vector in the western Mediterranean, suggest that hares may have an unexpected role in the epidemiology of L. infantum in Spain.This study is a contribution to project POII09-0141-8176 (JCCM and EU-FEDER) and EU grants ANTIGONE (278976) and APHAEA (EMIDA ERA-NET). F. Ruiz-Fon acknowledges a Juan de la Cierva contract (Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad).Peer Reviewe

Wild boar: an increasing concern for Aujeszky's disease control in pigs?

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The goal of this study was describing the temporal evolution of Aujeszky's disease virus (ADV) contact prevalence among Eurasian wild boar (<it>Sus scrofa</it>) populations under different management regimes and contact likelihoods with domestic pigs. Given the recent increase in wild boar abundance throughout Europe, we hypothesized that wild boar contact with ADV would remain stable in time even after significant reduction of ADV prevalence in domestic pigs.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Sera from 1659 wild boar were collected from 2000 to 2010 within 6 areas of the Iberian Peninsula and tested for the presence of antibodies against ADV by ELISA. According to sampling date, wild boar were grouped into three time periods. ADV prevalence was compared through period both globally and by geographic area. Overall seroprevalence for the ten-year study period was 49.6 ± 2.4%. The highest seroprevalence was recorded in areas with intense wild boar management. The annual proportion of positive wild boar sampling sites remained stable through the study period, while the percentage of domestic pig AD positive counties decreased from 70% in 2003 to 1.7% in 2010.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Results presented herein confirmed our hypothesis that ADV would remain almost stable in wild boar populations. This evidences the increasing risk wild boar pose in the final stages of ADV eradication in pigs and for wildlife conservation.</p

A Survey of the Selenium Ecosystem

Selenium is often considered the de-facto standard framework for end-to-end web testing nowadays. It allows practitioners to drive web browsers (such as Chrome, Firefox, Edge, or Opera) in an automated fashion using different language bindings (such as Java, Python, or JavaScript, among others). The term ecosystem, referring to the open-source software domain, includes various components, tools, and other interrelated elements sharing the same technological background. This article presents a descriptive survey aimed to understand how the community uses Selenium and its ecosystem. This survey is structured in seven categories: Selenium foundations, test development, system under test, test infrastructure, other frameworks, community, and personal experience. In light of the current state of Selenium, we analyze future challenges and opportunities around it.This work has been supported by the European Commission under the H2020 project "MICADO" (GA-822717), by the Government of Spain through the project "BugBirth" (RTI2018-101963-B-100), by the Regional Government of Madrid (CM) through the project "EDGEDATA-CM" (P2018/TCS-4499) cofunded by FSE & FEDER, and by the project "Analytics using sensor data for FlatCity" (MINECO/ERDF, EU) funded in part by the Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI) under Grant TIN2016-77158-C4-1-R and in part by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)

Bluetongue virus serotypes 1 and 4 in red deer, Spain

We studied the potential of red deer as bluetongue maintenance hosts and sentinels. Deer maintained detectable bluetongue virus (BTV) serotype 4 RNA for 1 year after the virus was cleared from livestock. However, the virus was not transmitted to yearlings. BTV serotype 1 RNA was detected in red deer immediately after its first detection in cattle.This study was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Natural, Rural and Marine Environment (RASVE 274/2007, and an agreement between Organismo Autónomo de Parques Nacionales (OAPN), Dirección General de Recursos Agricolas y Ganaderos (DGRAG), and Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC). F.R.-F. is supported by a postdoctoral contract of the Instituto de Salud Carlos III of the Spanish government.Peer Reviewe

Ecosystem effects of variant rabbit hemorrhagic disease virus, Iberian Peninsula

Letter to the Editor.The Aragón monitoring scheme is run by the Fish and Game Department, Government of Aragón. M.D.M. was supported by a JAE-DOC contract (Programa Junta para la Ampliación de Estudios), funded by CSIC and the European Social Fund. C.F. was supported by a Post-Doctoral Fellowship funded by NSERC, Government of Canada. C.G. acknowledges EU-FP7 grant ANTIGONE (#278976) and the EMIDA ERA-NET and INIA grant APHAEA.Peer Reviewe

A systematic review on cloud testing

A systematic literature review is presented that surveyed the topic of cloud testing over the period (2012-2017). Cloud testing can refer either to testing cloud-based systems (testing of the cloud), or to leveraging the cloud for testing purposes (testing in the cloud): both approaches (and their combination into testing of the cloud in the cloud) have drawn research interest. An extensive paper search was conducted by both automated query of popular digital libraries and snowballing, which resulted into the final selection of 147 primary studies. Along the survey a framework has been incrementally derived that classifies cloud testing research along six main areas and their topics. The paper includes a detailed analysis of the selected primary studies to identify trends and gaps, as well as an extensive report of the state of art as it emerges by answering the identified Research Questions. We find that cloud testing is an active research field, although not all topics have received so far enough attention, and conclude by presenting the most relevant open research challenges for each area of the classification framework.This paper describes research work mostly undertaken in the context of the European Project H2020 731535: ElasTest. This work has also been partially supported by: the Italian MIUR PRIN 2015 Project: GAUSS; the Regional Government of Madrid (CM) under project Cloud4BigData (S2013/ICE-2894) cofunded by FSE & FEDER; and the Spanish Government under project LERNIM (RTC-2016-4674-7) cofunded by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, FEDER & AEI

Spotted Fever Group Rickettsiae in Questing Ticks, Central Spain

These results demonstrate that SFG rickettsiae with public health relevance are found in ticks in central Spain as in other regions in Spain. In central Spain, the widespread distribution of tick vectors and possible wildlife hosts, the presence of persons in tick-infested recreational and hunting areas, and the transstadial and transovarial transmission of the pathogen in ticks may favor transmission to humans.Fil: Fernandez de Mera, Isabel G.. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas. Instituto de Investigación en Recursos Cinegéticos; España;Fil: Ruiz-Fons, Francisco. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas. Instituto de Investigación en Recursos Cinegéticos; España;Fil: de la Fuente, Gabriela. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas. Instituto de Investigación en Recursos Cinegéticos; España;Fil: Mangold, Atilio Jose. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro Regional Santa Fe. Estación Experimental Agropecuaria, Rafaela; Argentina; Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina;Fil: Gortázar, Christian. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas. Instituto de Investigación en Recursos Cinegéticos; España;Fil: de la Fuente, José. Oklahoma State University; Estados Unidos de América

Spotted fever group rickettsiaein questing ticks, central Spain

Letter to the Editor.F. R.-F. and I.G.F.M. are supported by a Juan de la Cierva contract from the Spanish Ministry for Economy and Competitiveness. Research supported by POII09-0141-8176 and European Union FP7 ANTIGONE (Anticipating the Global Onset of Novel Epidemics) project number 278976.Peer Reviewe

Long-Term Dynamics of Bluetongue Virus in Wild Ruminants : relationship with Outbreaks in Livestock in Spain, 2006-2011

Wild and domestic ruminants are susceptible to Bluetongue virus (BTV) infection. Three BTV serotypes (BTV-4, BTV-1 and BTV-8) have been detected in Spain in the last decade. Even though control strategies have been applied to livestock, BTV circulation has been frequently detected in wild ruminant populations in Spain. The aim of the present study is to assess the role for wild ruminants in maintaining BTV after the vaccination programs in livestock in mainland Spain. A total of 931 out 1,914 (48.6%) serum samples, collected from eight different wild ruminant species between 2006 and 2011, were BTV positive by ELISA. In order to detect specific antibodies against BTV-1, BTV-4 and BTV-8, positive sera were also tested by serumneutralisation test (SNT). From the ELISA positive samples that could be tested by SNT (687 out of 931), 292 (42.5%) showed neutralising antibodies against one or two BTV serotypes. For each BTV seroptype, the number of outbreaks in livestock (11,857 outbreaks in total) was modelled with pure autoregressive models and the resulting smoothed values, representing the predicted number of BTV outbreaks in livestock at municipality level, were positively correlated with BTV persistence in wild species. The strength of this relationship significantly decreased as red deer (Cervus elaphus) population abundance increased. In addition, BTV RNA was detected by real time RT-PCR in 32 out of 311 (10.3%) spleen samples from seropositive animals. Although BT outbreaks in livestock have decreased substantially after vaccination campaigns, our results indicated that wild ruminants have been exposed to BTV in territories where outbreaks in domestic animals occurred. The detection of BTV RNA and spatial association between BT outbreaks in livestock and BTV rates in red deer are consistent with the hypothesis of virus circulation and BTV maintenance within Iberian wild ruminant populations

COVID-19 in a cohort of pregnant women and their descendants, the MOACC-19 study

Purpose: The Mother and Child COVID-19 study is a cohort recruiting pregnant women and their children in Cantabria, North of Spain, during COVID-19 pandemic in order to ascertain consequences of SARS-CoV-2 infection on pregnant women and their descendants. This article reports the cohort profile and preliminary results as recruitment is still open. Participants: Three subcohorts can be identified at recruitment. Subcohort 1 includes women giving birth between 23 March and 25 May 2020; they have been retrospectively recruited and could have been exposed to COVID-19 only in their third trimester of pregnancy. Subcohort 2 includes women giving birth from 26 May 2020 on; they are being prospectively recruited and could have been exposed to COVID-19 in both their second and third trimesters of pregnancy. Subcohort 3 includes women in their 12 week of pregnancy prospectively recruited from 26 May 2020 on; they could have been exposed to COVID-19 anytime in their pregnancy. All women are being tested for SARS-CoV-2 infection using both RT-PCR for RNA detection and ELISA for anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies. All neonates are being tested for antibodies using immunochemoluminiscency tests; if the mother is tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 RNA, a nasopharyngeal swab is also obtained from the child for RT-PCR analysis. Findings to date: As of 22 October, 1167 women have been recruited (266, 354 and 547 for subcohorts 1, 2 and 3, respectively). Fourteen women tested positive to SARS-CoV-2 RNA by the day of delivery. All 14 children born from these women tested negative for SARS-CoV-2 RNA. Future plans: Children from women included in subcohort 3 are expected to be recruited by the end of 2020. Children will be followed-up for 1 year in order to ascertain the effect that COVID-19 on their development.This study is funding by a grant from Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII) (reference: COV20/00923). The funder did not have any role in the design, methods, analysis or preparation of this manuscript