François E Dufrasne

Sciensano · Infectious diseases in humans - Viral diseases

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccination has resulted in excellent protection against fatal disease, including in older adults. However, risk factors for post-vaccination fatal COVID-19 are largely unknown. We comprehensively studied three large nursing home outbreaks (20-35% fatal cases among residents) by combining severe acute respiratory...

The monitoring of antiviral-resistant influenza virus strains is important for public health given the availability and use of neuraminidase inhibitors and other antivirals to treat infected patients. Naturally occurring oseltamivir-resistant seasonal H3N2 influenza virus strains often carry a glutamate-to-valine substitution at position 119 in the...

From early 2020, a high demand for SARS-CoV-2 tests was driven by several testing indications, including asymptomatic cases, resulting in the massive roll-out of PCR assays to combat the pandemic. Considering the dynamic of viral shedding during the course of infection, the demand to report cycle threshold (Ct) values rapidly emerged. As Ct values...

Introduction The WHO urges action against the threat posed by HIV drug resistance. It is well known that the sensitivity of Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) is greater than that of Sanger Sequencing (SS). The objective of this study was to evaluate the performance of the novel NGS HIV-1 drug resistance monitoring system. Materials & methods NGS an...

The HIVs have evolved by selecting means to hijack numerous host cellular factors. HIVs exploit the transcription factor NF-κB to ensure efficient LTR-driven gene transcription. However, NF-κB is primarily known to act as a key regulator of the proinflammatory and antiviral responses. Interestingly, retroviruses activate NF-κB during early stages o...

Introduction The I-MOVE-COVID-19 and VEBIS hospital networks have been measuring COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness (VE) in participating European countries since early 2021. Aim We aimed to measure VE against PCR-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 in patients ≥ 20 years hospitalised with severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) from December 2021 to July 2022 (Om...

Introduction Two large multicentre European hospital networks have estimated vaccine effectiveness (VE) against COVID-19 since 2021. Aim We aimed to measure VE against PCR-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 in hospitalised severe acute respiratory illness (SARI) patients ≥ 20 years, combining data from these networks during Alpha (March–June)- and Delta (June–D...

Background To support the COVID‐19 pandemic response, many countries, including Belgium, implemented baseline genomic surveillance (BGS) programs aiming to early detect and characterize new SARS‐CoV‐2 variants. In parallel, Belgium maintained a sentinel network of six hospitals that samples patients with severe acute respiratory infections (SARI) a...

Serological assays for bovine tuberculosis diagnosis require the use of multiple Mycobacterium bovis specific antigens to ensure the detection of infected animals. In the present study, identification and selection process of antigens, based on data from published proteomic studies and involving the use of bioinformatics tools and an immuno-screeni...

COVID-19 vaccination has resulted in excellent protection against fatal disease, including in the elderly. However, risk factors for post-vaccination fatal COVID-19 are largely unknown. We comprehensively studied three large nursing home outbreaks (20-35% fatal cases) by combining SARS-CoV-2 aerosol monitoring, whole-genome phylogenetic analysis, a...

Purple non-sulfur bacteria (PNSB) are recognized as a highly versatile group of bacteria that assimilate a broad range of carbon sources. Growing heterotrophically, PNSB such as Rhodospirillum rubrum (Rs. rubrum) generate reduced equivalents that are used for biomass production. However, under photoheterotrophic conditions, more reduced electron ca...

Objectives The strains of HBV circulating among blood donors in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), are not yet characterized. The purpose of this study was to determine seroprevalence, changes in biochemical parameters during HBV infection and molecular characterization of HBV in blood donors in Lubumbashi. Methods The detection of HB...

HIV-2 is the second causative agent of AIDS and is commonly considered as an attenuated form of retroviral infection. Most of HIV-2-infected individuals display a slow-progressing disease, lower viral loads and a stronger immunological control of viral infection as compared with HIV-1-infected patients. The main hypothesis that could explain the di...

The Human Immunodeficiency Virus type 2 (HIV-2) is the second etiologic agent causing AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) in the human host. However, this retrovirus may be considered as an attenuated model of retroviral infection since the HIV-2-infected individuals show a longer asymptomatic phase, lower plasmatic viral loads without antiv...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0209561.].

The cytoplasmic tail (CT) of the HIV-2 envelope glycoprotein (Env) includes amino acid (aa) sequences similar to lentiviral lytic peptides (LLP) described in other lentiviruses. Within the putative LLP-2 region, we previously observed insertions of 3 or 7 aa in sequences deduced from plasma viral RNA of symptomatic HIV-2 infected individuals. Based...

BST-2 or tetherin is a host cell restriction factor that prevents the budding of enveloped viruses at the cell surface, thus impairing the viral spread. Several countermeasures to evade this antiviral factor have been positively selected in retroviruses: the human immunodeficiency virus type 2 (HIV-2) relies on the envelope glycoprotein (Env) to ov...