Travel & Endemic
Newsletter
March 2022

Mosquito-Borne Diseases
New Mosquito Vision Discovery Could Help You Hide
From These Disease-Carrying Bloodsuckers
New research shows that Aedes aegypti mosquitoes are attracted to speciﬁc colors,
including red, orange, black and cyan. The mosquitoes ignore other colors, such as
green, purple, blue, and white. The researchers believe these ﬁndings help explain how
mosquitoes ﬁnd hosts, since human skin, regardless of overall pigmentation, emits astrong red-orange “signal” to their eyes. The results reveal how the mosquito’s sense ofsmell — known as olfaction — inﬂuences how the mosquito responds to visual cues.
Link to Publication

Long-term safety of the tafenoquine antimalarial chemoprophylaxis
regimen: A 12-month, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial
Conclusions from this trial that conducted in 600 healthy adults:
Long-term use of weekly tafenoquine (200 mg) was associated with keratopathy,
which is usually reversible within 12 weeks of drug cessation.
Long-term use of tafenoquine was also associated with elevated levels of ALT, alkaline phosphatase, GGT, and creatinine, as well as mild anemia andmethemoglobinemia, all of which normalized after cessation.
Long-term use of tafenoquine was not associated with neuropsychiatric symptoms
or adverse events.
Travelers taking long-term tafenoquine for malaria chemoprophylaxis should bemonitored with ophthalmologic evaluation and blood tests every 3 to 6 months.
Link to article

Imported plasmodium ovale and mixed infections inIsrael 2008-2020:
The authors retrieved epidemiological and diagnostic data on all polymerase chain
reaction (PCR)-proven P. ovale infections imported to Israel between 2008 and 2020
And concluded that P. ovale is commonly imported to Israel from Africa, with a high rateof mixed infections and that the use of RDTs and microscopy is insufficient for thespecies-speciﬁc diagnosis of P. ovale, and must be complemented by PCR
Link

Genotype-speciﬁc features reduce the susceptibility of South American
yellow fever virus strains to vaccine-induced antibodies
Yellow fever vaccines based on an
African strain induce neutralizing
antibodies that are associatedwith protection. Haslwanter et al.
show that these antibodies have
reduced activity against SouthAmerican strains because they
bear genetically distinct surface proteins, suggesting that changes are needed in how
immune protection against YFV is monitored.
Link to Publication

Deaths from Congenital Zika Syndrome in Brazil
Data on survival among children with congenital Zika syndrome are limited. A population-based
cohort study from Brazil estimate mortality among live-born children with congenital Zika syndrome as compared with those without the syndrome. The results showed that the risk of death
was 11 times higher among live-born children with congenital Zika syndrome than among thosewithout the syndrome and persisted throughout the ﬁrst 3 years of life.
Link to Publication

Wednesday, March 21st 2022 // Kefar Hamacabia, Ramat-Gan
Link to Registration

Tick-Borne Encephalitis
Incidence of Tick-Borne Encephalitis during the COVID-19 Pandemic
in Selected European Countries
Signiﬁcant differences in the TBE incidence were found between countries. The highest
TBE incidence was found in Lithuania (25.45/100,000 inhabitants). A high TBE incidence
was also observed in Central European countries. In 12 of the 23 analyzed countries,
there was signiﬁcant increase in TBE incidence during the COVID-19 pandemic during2020 compared to 2015-2019. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic and imposed restrictions,the incidence of TBE is increasing in more than half of the analyzed countries. The
results of this study show that TBE is an especially important and growing problem inthe Baltic, Central European, and Scandinavian countries.
Link to Article

Tick-borne encephalitis among US travellers, 2010–20
TBE cases among US travellers are rare. From 2010–20, six patients with TBE wereidentiﬁed among both paediatric and adult travellers and all were male. The patients
travelled to various countries in Europe or Russia.
The author recommend clinicians to consider the diagnosis of TBE in a patient with aneurologic or febrile illness recently returned from a TBE-endemic country, particularly if
a tick bite or possible tick exposure is reported.
Link to Publication

The Covid Corner

CDC study: N95, KN95 masks best reduce odds of COVID-19 infection
According to the study, surgical masks reduced the odds of testing positive for
COVID-19 by about 66 percent compared tono masks at all. People who reported wearing N95 respirators while indoors wereabout 83 percent less likely to test positive
compared with those who said they neverwore a mask inside, the CDC found.
Link*The study was conducted from Feb. 18
through Dec. 1, 2021, before the omicron
variant became widespread.

SARS-CoV-2 human challenge study offers novel insights
into viral kinetics:
This ﬁrst SARS-CoV-2 human-challenge study was conducted safely and reported onviral kinetics. The 36 healthy volunteers (aged 18-29 years) without evidence of previous
infection or vaccination were inoculated intranasally with a wild-type virus and received
around-the-clock medical monitoring in a negative-pressure inpatient quarantine unit.
A robust viral replication was observed in 53% (18/34) of seronegative participants. Within
two to four days of incubation, viral loads (VLs) escalated rapidly, peaking at high levels
and continuing for over a week. Despite high VLs, the symptoms that were reported in
89% of infected individuals were consistently mild-to-moderate and predominantly
conﬁned to the upper respiratory tract.
Detailed viral kinetics showed that some individuals shed culturable virus at 12 days pi,
up to 10 days after symptom onset. On average, the viable virus was still detectable 10days pi. Therefore, these data support the isolation periods of 10 days post-symptom
onset advocated in many guidelines to minimize onward transmission.
The level of viral load and development of serum spike-speciﬁc and neutralizing
antibodies did not correlate with symptoms. Lateral ﬂow results reﬂected viable virus
and modeling suggested that rapid testing twice a week could diagnose infection before
signiﬁcant amounts of viable virus become presentLink*This preprint is under consideration at a Nature Portfolio Journal

Contact | lital.hertz@sanoﬁ.com
Scientiﬁc Editor | Prof. Eli Schwartz
MAT-IL-2100418