Current Status of Rift Valley Fever Vaccine Development

Citation: Faburay, B.; LaBeaud, A.D.; McVey, D.S.; Wilson, W.C.; Richt, J.A. Current Status of Rift Valley Fever Vaccine Development. Vaccines 2017, 5, 29.Rift Valley Fever (RVF) is a mosquito-borne zoonotic disease that presents a substantial threat to human and public health. It is caused by Rift Valley fever phlebovirus (RVFV), which belongs to the genus Phlebovirus and the family Phenuiviridae within the order Bunyavirales. The wide distribution of competent vectors in non-endemic areas coupled with global climate change poses a significant threat of the transboundary spread of RVFV. In the last decade, an improved understanding of the molecular biology of RVFV has facilitated significant progress in the development of novel vaccines, including DIVA (differentiating infected from vaccinated animals) vaccines. Despite these advances, there is no fully licensed vaccine for veterinary or human use available in non-endemic countries, whereas in endemic countries, there is no clear policy or practice of routine/strategic livestock vaccinations as a preventive or mitigating strategy against potential RVF disease outbreaks. The purpose of this review was to provide an update on the status of RVF vaccine development and provide perspectives on the best strategies for disease control. Herein, we argue that the routine or strategic vaccination of livestock could be the best control approach for preventing the outbreak and spread of future disease

Hydrothermal carbonization of primary sewage sludge and synthetic faeces: Effect of reaction temperature and time on filterability

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: DANSO-BOATENG, E. ...et al., 2015. Hydrothermal Carbonization of Primary Sewage Sludge and Synthetic Faeces: Effect of Reaction Temperature and Time on Filterability. Environmental Progress & Sustainable Energy, 34(5), pp. 1279-1290., which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ep.12114. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving."The effect of reaction temperature and time on the filterability of slurries of primary sewage sludge (PSS) and synthetic faeces (SF) following hydrothermal carbonisation (HTC) was investigated and optimised using response surface methodology (RSM). Filterability was shown to improve as the treatment temperature and reaction time at which the solids were carbonised was increased. The best filtration results were achieved at the highest temperature (200°C) and longest treatment time (240 min) employed here. The specific cake resistance to filtration of the carbonised solids was found to vary between 5.43 x 1012 and 2.05 x 1010 m kg–1 for cold filtration of PSS, 1.11 x 1012 and 3.49 x 1010 m kg–1 for cold filtration of SF, and 3.01 x 1012 and 3.86 x 1010 m kg–1 for hot filtration of SF, and decreased with increasing reaction temperature and time for carbonisation. There was no significant difference in the specific resistance of cold and hot filtration for SF. The RSM models employed here were found to yield predictions that were close to the experimental results obtained and should therefore prove useful in designing and optimizing HTC filtration systems for generating solids for a wide variety of end uses

Rift Valley Fever – epidemiological update and risk of introduction into Europe

Rift Valley fever (RVF) is a vector-borne disease transmitted by a broad spectrum of mosquito species, especially Aedes and Culex genus, to animals (domestic and wild ruminants and camels) and humans. Rift Valley fever is endemic in sub-Saharan Africa and in the Arabian Peninsula, with periodic epidemics characterised by 5–15 years of inter-epizootic periods. In the last two decades, RVF was notified in new African regions (e.g. Sahel), RVF epidemics occurred more frequently and low-level enzootic virus circulation has been demonstrated in livestock in various areas. Recent outbreaks in a French overseas department and some seropositive cases detected in Turkey, Tunisia and Libya raised the attention of the EU for a possible incursion into neighbouring countries. The movement of live animals is the most important pathway for RVF spread from the African endemic areas to North Africa and the Middle East. The movement of infected animals and infected vectors when shipped by flights, containers or road transport is considered as other plausible pathways of introduction into Europe. The overall risk of introduction of RVF into EU through the movement of infected animals is very low in all the EU regions and in all MSs (less than one epidemic every 500 years), given the strict EU animal import policy. The same level of risk of introduction in all the EU regions was estimated also considering the movement of infected vectors, with the highest level for Belgium, Greece, Malta, the Netherlands (one epidemic every 228–700 years), mainly linked to the number of connections by air and sea transports with African RVF infected countries. Although the EU territory does not seem to be directly exposed to an imminent risk of RVFV introduction, the risk of further spread into countries neighbouring the EU and the risks of possible introduction of infected vectors, suggest that EU authorities need to strengthen their surveillance and response capacities, as well as the collaboration with North African and Middle Eastern countries.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Rift Valley fever virus (Bunyaviridae: Phlebovirus): an update on pathogenesis, molecular epidemiology, vectors, diagnostics and prevention

Rift Valley fever (RVF) virus is an arbovirus in the Bunyaviridae family that, from phylogenetic analysis, appears to have first emerged in the mid-19th century and was only identified at the begininning of the 1930s in the Rift Valley region of Kenya. Despite being an arbovirus with a relatively simple but temporally and geographically stable genome, this zoonotic virus has already demonstrated a real capacity for emerging in new territories, as exemplified by the outbreaks in Egypt (1977), Western Africa (1988) and the Arabian Peninsula (2000), or for re-emerging after long periods of silence as observed very recently in Kenya and South Africa. The presence of competent vectors in countries previously free of RVF, the high viral titres in viraemic animals and the global changes in climate, travel and trade all contribute to make this virus a threat that must not be neglected as the consequences of RVF are dramatic, both for human and animal health. In this review, we present the latest advances in RVF virus research. In spite of this renewed interest, aspects of the epidemiology of RVF virus are still not fully understood and safe, effective vaccines are still not freely available for protecting humans and livestock against the dramatic consequences of this virus