West Nile Virus and Tick-Borne Encephalitis Virus Are Endemic in Equids in Eastern Austria.

The emergence of West Nile virus (WNV) and Usutu virus (USUV) in addition to the autochthonous tick-borne encephalitis virus (TBEV) in Europe causes rising concern for public and animal health. The first equine case of West Nile neuroinvasive disease in Austria was diagnosed in 2016. As a consequence, a cross-sectional seroprevalence study was conducted in 2017, including 348 equids from eastern Austria. Serum samples reactive by ELISA for either flavivirus immunoglobulin G or M were further analyzed with the plaque reduction neutralization test (PRNT-80) to identify the specific etiologic agent. Neutralizing antibody prevalences excluding vaccinated equids were found to be 5.3% for WNV, 15.5% for TBEV, 0% for USUV, and 1.2% for WNV from autochthonous origin. Additionally, reverse transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) was performed to detect WNV nucleic acid in horse sera and was found to be negative in all cases. Risk factor analysis did not identify any factors significantly associated with seropositivity.

Insulin like growth factor binding protein 2 (IGFBP-2) for risk prediction in patients with severe aortic stenosis undergoing Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation (TAVI).

INTRODUCTION: Severe aortic stenosis (AS) caused by degenerative calcification is the most frequent acquired valvular heart disease worldwide and mortality rates are considerably high. Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation (TAVI) is a well-established method for valve replacement in high risk patients with AS. However, there is a lack of reliable predictors for patients undergoing TAVI since commonly used scores were developed for surgical populations. MATERIALS AND METHODS: 208 patients subjected to TAVI were included in this study. Plasma samples were obtained before TAVI and were evaluated for IGFBP-2 using commercially available ELISA kits. IGFBP-2 levels were analyzed for their ability for risk prediction after TAVI. RESULTS: IGFBP-2 levels measured before TAVI correlated significantly with left ventricular ejection fraction, EUROSCORE and other functional and prognostic parameters like the 6-minute walking test. When patients were retrospectively divided in two groups with a cut-off of serum IGFBP-2 levels of 275 ng/ml, IGFBP-2 was a strong predictor for 30-day and one-year mortality (3% vs. 11%, p = 0.05 and 18.2% vs. 46.2%; p < 0.001 respectively). Compared to an EUROSCORE above 20 or an STS score cut-off above 8, IGFBP-2 plasma levels above 275 ng/ml outperformed the established risk score for prediction of one-year mortality as assessed by NRI (0.65 95% CI 0.37-0.94; p < 0.001 and 0.54 95% CI 0.25-0.82; p < 0.001, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: Our results indicate that IGFBP-2 could serve as new outcome predictor for patients undergoing TAVI procedure. By providing additional information to the commonly used EUROSCORE, IGFPB-2 analysis could further assist Heart Team decision making.

First application of a protein-based approach for time since death estimation.

Awareness of postmortem degradation processes in a human body is fundamental to develop methods for forensic time since death estimation (TDE). Currently, applied approaches are all more or less limited to certain postmortem phases, or have restrictions on behalf of circumstances of death. Novel techniques, however, rarely exceed basic research phases due to various reasons. We report the first application of a novel method, based on decay of muscle proteins, in a recent case of murder-suicide, where other TDE methods failed to obtain data. We detected considerably different protein degradation profiles in both individuals involved and compared the data to our presently available database. We obtained statistical evidence for un-simultaneous death and therefore received valuable information to trace the progression of events based on protein degradation. Although we could not sensibly convert the data to respective times of death, this case highlights the potential for future application and elucidates the necessary further steps to develop a viable TDE method.