Francesca Latronico

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations | FAO · Animal Production and Health Division

The first Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Action Plan on antimicrobial resistance (AMR), published in 2016, identified the need to develop capacity for AMR surveillance and monitoring in food and agriculture sectors. As part of this effort, FAO has developed the “Assessment Tool for Laboratories and AMR Surveillance Sy...

Multisectoral, One Health collaboration is essential for addressing national and international health threats that arise at the human-animal-environment interface. Thanks to the efforts of multiple organisations, countries now have an array of One Health tools available to assess capacities within and between sectors, plan and prioritise activities...

A poster informing on the development, implementation, and current results of the FAO ATLASS tool, for assessment of laboratories and antimicrobial resistance surveillance systems at national and regional levels.

Abstract The European Commission asked EFSA for a scientific opinion on chronic wasting disease in two parts. Part one, on surveillance, animal health risk‐based measures and public health risks, was published in January 2017. This opinion (part two) addresses the remaining Terms of Reference, namely, ‘are the conclusions and recommendations in the...

Puumala hantavirus (PUUV) causes hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome in humans, that is an endemic disease in Finland. We estimated the seroprevalence of PUUV in Finland and explored risk factors and disease associations by using unique survey data with health register linkage. A total of 2000 sera from a nationwide health survey from 2011, repre...

The Panel on Biological Hazards (BIOHAZ) is a scientific panel of the European Food Safety Authority that provides independent advice and performs risk assessment (RA) on biological hazards in the food and feed chain. The scientific outputs carried out during 2012–2016, covering a wide range of biological hazards for food safety, are presented in t...

Hepatitis E virus (HEV) is an important infection in humans in EU/EEA countries, and over the last 10 years more than 21,000 acute clinical cases with 28 fatalities have been notified with an overall 10-fold increase in reported HEV cases; the majority (80%) of cases were reported from France, Germany and the UK. However, as infection in humans is...

Sixty bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) cases of Classical or unknown type (BARB-60 cases) were born after the date of entry into force of the EU total feed ban on 1 January 2001. The European Commission has requested EFSA to provide a scientific opinion on the most likely origin(s) of these BARB-60 cases; whether feeding with material contami...

A multi-country outbreak of Salmonella Enteritidis phage type (PT) 8 with multiple locus variable-number tandem repeat analysis (MLVA) profiles 2-9-7-3-2 and 2-9-6-3-2, linked to eggs, is ongoing in the EU/EEA. Based on whole genome sequencing (WGS), isolates are part of two distinct but related genetic clusters. ECDC and EFSA are liaising with rel...

Background: Many countries worldwide have reported increasing numbers of emm89 group A Streptococcus (GAS) cases during last decade. Pathogen genetic factors linked to this increase need assessment. Methods: We investigated epidemiological characteristics of emm89 bacteremic GAS cases, including 7-day and 30-day case fatality (CF), in Finland du...

Validation of whole genome sequencing for surveillance of invasive meningococcal disease at the national reference laboratory in Finland A Vainio1, F Latronico1,2, J Halkilahti1, M Toropainen1 1Department of Infectious Diseases, National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL), Helsinki, Finland 2European Programme for Public Health Microbiology T...

Title: Genomic tracks behind spread of bacteremic Group A Streptococcus type emm89 in Finland, 2004-2014 Background Invasive Group A streptococci (iGAS) cause severe infections as bacteremia, toxic shock syndrome and necrotising fasciitis. Emm gene typing is used to estimate genetic relationships among strains causing disease. During last few yea...

Detection of human Coronaviruses using multiplex realtime reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction during virological surveillance of influenza, Finland October 2013-September 2014 Francesca Latronico (1,2), Niina Ikonen (1), Soile Blomqvist (1), Outi Lyytikainen (1), Carita Savolainen-Kopra (1) 1. National Institute for Health and Welfare...

Abstract BACKGROUND: In August and September 2014, unexpected clusters of enterovirus-D68 (EV-D68) infections associated with severe respiratory disease emerged from North-America. In September, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) asked European countries to strengthen respiratory sample screening for enterovirus detect...

The recent worldwide spread of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus pseudintermedius (MRSP) in dogs is a reason for concern due to the typical multidrug resistance patterns displayed by some MRSP lineages such as sequence type (ST) 71. The objective of this study was to compare the in vitro adherence properties between MRSP and methicillin-suscepti...

The current knowledge of in vitro adherence of Staphylococcus pseudintermedius to canine corneocytes is limited to comparative analyses between strains, staphylococcal species or corneocytes collected from different breeds, body sites and hosts. However, the role played by colonization status of corneocyte donors remains unknown. The aim of this st...

In this study, the association of red complex (RC) bacteria that include Treponema denticola, Tannerella forsythia and Porphyromonas gingivalis with acute, exacerbated or chronic apical periodontitis was evaluated. Seventy-one patients with periapical disease were evaluated by clinical examination and microbiological samples obtained from the root...

Two models were used for colonizing pigs under experimental conditions. In the first model, six 5-week old piglets were challenged by nasal and gastrointestinal inoculation with a mixture of four strains representing the most prevalent methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) sequence types (ST398, ST9) and spa types (t08, t011, t034, t89...

The overall prevalence of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus pseudintermedius (MRSP) was 2% (10/590) among 590 canine specimens submitted to an Italian veterinary diagnostic laboratory during a two-month period, and 21% (10/48) among Staphylococcus intermedius group (SIG) isolates. All methicillin-resistant strains exhibited additional resistance...

Brucella spp. is a worldwide zoonotic pathogen. Infection by Brucella canis in dogs is endemic in the Southern USA and in Central and South America, but it appears sporadically in other parts of the world, including Europe. Tissue samples from a dog with chronic prostatitis, discospondylitis and locomotor problems were subjected to clinical and lab...

The oral cavity may represent a site of colonization by antibiotic-resistant bacteria, such as methicillin-resistant staphylococci (MRS). To define the prevalence of staphylococci and MRS in the oral cavity, an observational study was carried out in the city of Bari (Italy). Sixty subjects were asked to provide oral samples and a questionnaire abou...

The long-term protective immunity of an inactivated mineral-oil adjuvanted Mycoplasma agalactiae vaccine was evaluated in sheep. The antigen suspension was emulsified with a mixture of three mineral oils (Montanide ISA-563, Marcol-52, Montane-80 at the ratio of 30%, 63%, and 7%, respectively). Twenty-two animals were divided in 2 groups (A and B) a...

A methicillin-resistant (MR) Staphylococcus epidermidis strain was isolated from a saddle horse affected by osteolysis. MR coagulase-negative staphylococci (MRCNS) were isolated from 11 of 14 (78.8%) horses housed in the same riding club. By typing of the SCCmec region, almost the strains displayed a non typeable (NT) pattern and possessed the ccr...