Publications by authors named "Sjoerd P H Rebers"
Article Synopsis
- A significant COVID-19 outbreak occurred in the Netherlands after nightclubs reopened and lifted distancing rules, even though negative tests or vaccinations were required for entry.
- The event highlights how quickly new variants can spread in mostly unvaccinated groups when public health restrictions are eased.
- Following this incident, we observed ongoing community spread of the identified virus strain.
Background: The majority of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infections are found in low- and middle-income countries, which harbor many region-specific HCV subtypes. Nevertheless, direct-acting antiviral (DAA) trials have almost exclusively been conducted in high-income countries, where mainly epidemically spread HCV subtypes are present. Recently, several studies have demonstrated suboptimal DAA efficacy for certain nonepidemic subtypes, which could hamper global HCV elimination.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFParechoviruses (PeVs) are highly prevalent viruses worldwide. Over the last decades, several studies have been published on PeV epidemiology in Europe, Asia and North America, while information on other continents is lacking. The aim of this study was to describe PeV circulation in a cohort of children in Malawi, Africa.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEnteroviruses (EVs) are among the most commonly detected viruses infecting humans worldwide. Although the prevalence of EVs is widely studied, the status of EV prevalence in sub-Saharan Africa remains largely unknown. The objective of our present study was therefore to increase our knowledge on EV circulation in sub-Saharan Africa.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: The presence of respiratory viruses and the association with outcomes were assessed in invasively ventilated ICU patients, stratified by admission diagnosis.
Design: Prospective observational study.
Setting: Five ICUs in the Netherlands.
We compared 454 amplicon sequencing with clonal sequencing for the characterization of intra-host hepatitis C virus (HCV) NS3 variants. Clonal and 454 sequences were obtained from 12 patients enrolled in a clinical phase I study for telaprevir, an NS3-4a protease inhibitor. Thirty-nine datasets were used to compare the consensus sequence, average pairwise distance, normalized Shannon entropy, phylogenetic tree topology and the number and frequency of variants derived from both sequencing techniques.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: INNO-LiPA HBV Genotyping (LiPA HBV GT) and INNO-LiPA HBV PreCore (LiPA HBV PC) are commercially available assays for hepatitis B virus (HBV) characterization. These assays are labor-intensive and may be prone to exogenous DNA contamination due to their use of nested PCR amplification procedures and lack of contamination control measures.
Objective: Standardized, single-round INNO-LiPA PCR amplification protocols incorporating uracil N-glycosylase and automated sample processing by the MagNA Pure LC instrument were evaluated.