Leptospirosis is a bacterial disease that affects both humans and animals, with a wide variety of symptoms, from mild illness to serious and sometimes fatal disease. This zoonotic disease (transmitted from animals to humans) occurs worldwide and is a problem of human and veterinary public health. 

You are kindly invited to the online meeting of the European Leptospirosis Society [2], which will take place on May 6th, 2021. 

This webinar is organised by the Veterinary bacteriology service [3] of Sciensano, National Reference Laboratory for animal leptospirosis, and:

• reviews the epidemiological situation of leptospirosis in the different European countries, and its impact on human, animal (domestic and wild animals) [4] and environmental health [5]
• presents new developments in the fields of diagnosis and surveillance of leptospirosis
• explores the subject of rodent-borne haemorrhagic fevers

Thanks to the participation of eminent international experts, you will get the opportunity to interact with research scientists, pharma industries and leptospirosis and rodent-borne haemorrhagic fevers enthusiasts.

During the webinar, the opportunity is offered to scientists and highly motivated students to present their research findings in the form of poster (video) presentations. Follow the instructions in this document [6] to submit your abstract before April 16th, 2021, 12 am. 

Program

13:00 – 13:10: Welcome note and symposium introduction (Christian Leonard, General Manager of Sciensano)
13:10 – 13:30: Taxonomy, ecology and pathogenesis of the genus Leptospira revisited by genomics (Mathieu Picardeau, Unit Biology of Spirochetes, Institut Pasteur, Paris, France)   1_m-picardeau-els_version_3_for_website.pdf [7]
13:30 – 13:50: Leptospirosis in humans: diagnosis of acute febrile illnesses during the COVID-19 pandemic (Marga Goris, Department of Medical Microbiology, OIE and National Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Leptospirosis, Amsterdam University Medical Center, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands)  2_marga_goris_2021_05.pdf [8]
13:50 – 14:00:  Leptospirosis in Albania (Erjona Abazaj, Laboratory of Parasitology, Department of Epidemiology and Infectious Diseases Control, Institute of Public Health,  Tirana, Albania)  3_e-abazaz_leptospirosis_in_albania.pdf [9]
14:00 – 14:15:  Questions/Discussion and practical info about posters running

14:15 – 14:30: 15 min break (6 x 1 min running on of poster presentations from students)   1_els_abstracts_pause_at_14h15_-_v2.pdf [10]

14:30 – 14:50: Genital bovine leptospirosis: A new look for an old disease (Walter Lilenbaum, Veterinary Bacteriology Lab, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)  4_w-lilenbaum_els.pdf [11]
14:50 – 15:00: Insight into Leptospira infection in wild boar (Sus scrofa) (Giovanni Cilia, Department of Veterinary Science, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy)  5_2021.05.06_cilia_els_webinar.pdf [12]
15:00 – 15:10:  Urinary shedding of leptospires in Palearctic bats (Jiri Pikula, Department of Ecology and Diseases of Zoo Animals, Game, Fish and Bees, University of Veterinary and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Brno, Czech Republic)   6_european_leptospirosis_society_2021_pikula.pdf [13]
15:10 – 15:20: Freshwater monitoring by nanopore sequencing (Lara Urban, Department of Anatomy, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand)   7_urban_els_may21.pdf [14]
15:20 – 15:35: Questions/Discussion and practical info about posters running 

15:35 – 15:50: 15 min break (6 x 1 min running on of poster presentations from students)   2_els_abstracts_pause_at_15h35_.pdf [15]

15:50 – 16:10:  Models for studying rodent borne orthohantaviruses (Barry Rockx, Dept. of Viroscience, Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, The Netherlands)   8_models_for_studying_rodent-borne_orthohantaviruses-els_2021.pdf [16]
16:10 – 16:20:  Gene silencing in pathogenic Leptospira by CRISPR-interference (Luis Fernandes, Infectious Bacterial Diseases Research Unit, National Animal Disease Center, Agricultural Research Service, United States Department of Agriculture, Ames, IA, USA and Laboratório de Desenvolvimento de Vacinas, Instituto Butantan, Sao Paulo, SP, Brazil)   9_els_luis_fernandes.pdf [17]
16:20 – 16:30:  A live attenuated-vaccine model confers cross-protective immunity against different species of the Leptospira genus (Elsio Wunder, Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, USA)   10_2021_05_04_wunder_elsio_els.pdf [18]
16:30 – 16:45: Questions/Discussion and final word

See the full invitation for this webinar [19]

Registration

Registration is mandatory to receive the link to access the webinar. 

• Register before April 16th 2021, 12 am if you want to submit an abstract [20]and to participate in the webinar
• Register before May 1st 2021 if you want to participate in the webinar 

Complete the survey to register  [21]