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13 Jan, 4 tweets, 2 min read
Incursion of European Bat Lyssavirus 1 (EBLV-1) in Serotine Bats in the United Kingdom - Interesting to see European Bat Lyssavirus (my third favourite bat lyssavirus 😂) establishing itself in another species of bat in the uk. EBLV is rabies’ brother… pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34696409/
…and is fatal in humans (though rare). It used to be pretty much only seen in Daubenton’s bat (which are also found in Ireland) but now seem to be establishing themselves in Serotine bats. Samples mostly taken in Southern England. Not sure if this species is seen in Ireland…
..as Serotine bats traditionally lived in continental Europe but seem to have adapted to southern UK. Surveillance is always going in in the background for low-incidence high-consequence diseases like these. Core public health work. #OneHealth
Antigenic distribution at autopsy is pretty much as you’d expect…in nerve tissue in the head, where it can transmit. Including nerve supply to tooth pulp Image

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More from @NICU_doc_salone

Niall Conroy Profile picture
16 Jan
Interesting work on Hendra Virus in grey headed flying fox bats in Australia shows the presence of a new variant of Hendra (Hendra G2) in a sample of bats tested for Australian Bat Lyssavirus since 2013. For those not working in Oz, Hendra is a low-frequency high-consequence… Image
…infection that is responsible for the deaths of 5 people who became unwell after exposure to sick horses. The bats infect the horses, who then infect humans. Infection of horses seems to occur when they feed underneath bat colonies and are exposed to falling birth products or… Image
…urine and saliva, which contaminates their feed. The horses develop respiratory and/or neurological symptoms and often die. People who have close contact with them while they’re unwell can contract the disease. Up until a few years ago, we knew about one type of Hendra virus…
Read 5 tweets
Niall Conroy Profile picture
18 Nov 21
Mask-wearing cuts Covid incidence by 53%, says global study | Coronavirus | The Guardian This is all over my timeline today. I’m a fan of masks, and it is AMAZING progress to see a meta-analysis of public health interventions for covid. But….. theguardian.com/world/2021/nov…
..we need to look past headlines. This study looked at a range of measures, including masks, handwashing+disinfection. It’s well written and methodologically fine. But a meta-analysis can only analyse primary research and it’s conclusions are only as good as those studies….
…While people have been screaming at public health to “follow the science”, public health has been saying the science is blighted by confounders. So we need to be careful about interpreting the finding around masks, as the authors themselves point out. 6 studies. Big bias risk…
Read 9 tweets
Niall Conroy Profile picture
18 Oct 21
It’s been a real Rabies/Lyssavirus week for me. And whenever that happens, I’m always amazed how much of an absolute operator the virus is. Some of it’s basic abilities include - Fooling your body into reducing its immune response (considering these viruses are 100% fatal….
…that’s quite the evolutionary achievement). One of the ways it does this is by inhibiting your body’s ability to produce B-interferon, which is a vital part of our immune machinery. In fact the #rabies virus has a whole chunk of its genome dedicated to doing just that….
…Rabies/lyssavirus also heads straight for your brain, where it increases the concentration of nitric oxide by about 25 times. That leads to a LOT of CNS overexcitement and it decreases your ability to fight off cell death; bad news when that’s happening in your 🧠……
Read 15 tweets
Niall Conroy Profile picture
16 Oct 21
As an end-user of the frankly awful data in the covid public health space, the best contributions that the various scientific advocacy groups and individuals around the globe could make, in my opinion, would be proper rigorous *systematic* reviews, especially around efficacy….
…of various mitigation strategies (many of which seem to be over-sold to the public) and the actual prevalence of the now well-defined long covid in different age groups. Without certainty around these questions, it’s really difficult to conduct rigorous risk assessments….
…,which are really the key to proper health protection. Instead we just get noise, with the public believing the 99% of stuff on twitter that is pure fiction, even from people who seem very credible and post links to convincing-looking papers. Most of what I see here is wrong.
Read 4 tweets
Niall Conroy Profile picture
16 Oct 21
We’re relocating back to Ireland in February and, much as I love Trim, I’ll miss having Urangan pier in #HerveyBay as my morning walk Image
It was one of those rare Saturdays where I didn’t get called in to work, so we got to enjoy the local Osprey having breakfast
There are about 10 of these MASSIVE pelicans living on the pier. The locals call them all “Steve” because nobody can tell them apart 😂 Image
Read 6 tweets
Niall Conroy Profile picture
14 Aug 21
People keep saying that when this pandemic is over, we have to make sure our contact tracing capacity is strengthened to cope with future threats. This reflects a misunderstanding of what contact tracing is. Contact tracing involves talking to a case and finding out who…..
…they’ve been in touch with. This is really important stuff, but that data is then used by specialists in outbreak control to assess and manage those contacts. Ultimately, public health teams need to use data from many sources to make a plan to control the disease. This is….
…complex work and requires years of training. Our contact tracers are superb, but people can be trained to contact trace in a short space of time. That function can be ramped up pretty quickly when required. What we need before the next pandemic are enough outbreak control…
Read 5 tweets

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