[Dengue virus circulation in West Africa: An emerging public health issue]. / Circulation du virus de la dengue en Afrique de l'Ouest - Une problématique émergente de santé publique.

Dengue is the most widespread arbovirosis in the world, with approximately 390 million cases per year, 96 millions of which have clinical manifestations and 25,000 deaths. In West Africa, the circulation of this virus in human populations was first reported in the 1960s in Nigeria. Clinical diagnosis of dengue in West Africa is made difficult by the existence of other diseases with similar clinical presentations. Biological diagnosis remains therefore the only alternative. This biological diagnosis requires high quality equipment and well-trained personnel, which are not always available in resource-limited countries. Thus, many cases of dengue fever are consistently reported as malaria, leading to mismanagement, which can have serious consequences on the health status of patients. It is therefore necessary to set up surveillance systems for febrile infections of unknown origin in Africa by strengthening the diagnostic capacities of national laboratories.

TITLE: Circulation du virus de la dengue en Afrique de l'Ouest - Une problématique émergente de santé publique. ABSTRACT: La dengue est l'arbovirose la plus répandue dans le monde avec environ 390 millions de cas par an, dont 96 millions présentent des manifestations cliniques, avec plus de 25 152 décès annuels répertoriés. Le diagnostic clinique de la dengue en Afrique de l'Ouest est rendu difficile par l'existence d'autres maladies présentant des tableaux cliniques similaires. Il est donc nécessaire de mettre en place des systèmes de surveillance des infections fébriles d'origine inconnue en Afrique, en renforçant les capacités diagnostiques des laboratoires nationaux.

CoproID predicts the source of coprolites and paleofeces using microbiome composition and host DNA content.

Shotgun metagenomics applied to archaeological feces (paleofeces) can bring new insights into the composition and functions of human and animal gut microbiota from the past. However, paleofeces often undergo physical distortions in archaeological sediments, making their source species difficult to identify on the basis of fecal morphology or microscopic features alone. Here we present a reproducible and scalable pipeline using both host and microbial DNA to infer the host source of fecal material. We apply this pipeline to newly sequenced archaeological specimens and show that we are able to distinguish morphologically similar human and canine paleofeces, as well as non-fecal sediments, from a range of archaeological contexts.