Background: Hospitals are often the epicentres of newly circulating infections. Healthcare workers (HCWs) are at high risk of acquiring infectious diseases and may be among the first to contract emerging infections. This ...

The threat of avian influenza (AI) viruses to humans in Europe in 2005 prompted the Robert Koch Institute to establish a routine monitoring instrument condensing information on all human AI cases worldwide reported from ...

Host-specific serovars of Salmonella enterica often have large-scale chromosomal rearrangements that occur by recombination between rrn operons. Two hypotheses have been proposed to explain these rearrangements: (i) ...

A new strain of measles virus, D4-Hamburg, was imported from London to Hamburg in December 2008 and subsequently spread to Bulgaria, where an outbreak of >24,300 cases was observed. We analyzed spread of the virus to ...

Background: Since the start of the 2009 influenza A pandemic (H1N1pdm), the World Health Organization and its member states have gathered information to characterize the clinical severity of H1N1pdm infection and to assist ...

Background: Despite the successful eradication of smallpox by the WHO-led vaccination programme, pox virus infections remain a considerable health threat. The possible use of smallpox as a bioterrorism agent as well as ...

We describe the epidemiology and virology of the official length of the 2009 pandemic (68 weeks from April 2009 to August 2010) in the 27 European Union Member States plus Norway and Iceland. The main trends are derived ...

Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a contagious, rapidly spreading transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE), or prion disease, occurring in cervids such as white tailed-deer (WTD), mule deer or elk in North America. ...

Objectives: Numbers of newly diagnosed HIV infections among men who have sex with men (MSM) in Germany increased after the year 2000. We sought to explore trends in STI co-infections around the time of HIV seroconversion ...

During the last decade, Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) increased markedly inside as well as outside of hospitals. In association with the occurrence of new hypervirulent C. difficile strains, CDI became more important. ...