Spanish Society of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology (SEIMC)

Research in mice shows that the gut microbiota of pregnant mice influences the development of stem cells in their offspring. Changes in the bacterium Akkermansia muciniphila in the maternal microbiota alter the proliferation of intestinal and neural cells in the offspring, according to the study published in Cell Stem Cell.

With the increase in cases of mpox, the European Union's Health Security Committee met on Monday. According to the Ministry of Health, the meeting concluded ‘with recommendations very similar to those previously issued by the WHO and the ECDC’. The risk of the likelihood of mpox spreading to the general EU population is currently considered to be ‘low’, although it increases in populations with close contact with diagnosed cases and in particularly vulnerable people. Further imported cases in the EU are not excluded and vaccination of the general population is not recommended. In addition, the HSC does not recommend border control.  
 

The establishment of the baby's microbiota occurs around the time of birth, when it receives bacteria directly from the mother. A study in the journal Cell suggests that genes can also be transmitted between them by horizontal transfer, without the need for the passage of these micro-organisms.

Today the World Health Organisation declared smallpox a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. The move was announced at a press conference by its director general, Tedros Adhanom, despite a lack of consensus in the International Health Regulations Emergency Committee.

The first study of UK cases of the current monkeypox outbreak finds differences between the symptoms of these patients and those of previous outbreaks in other parts of the world. The work is published in the journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases.