The Area’s research team has collaborated in 3 scientific papers presented at this scientific event, which brought together a large number of national and international experts.
The research staff of the Genomics Area of the Instituto Tecnológico y de Energías Renovables (ITER) participated this year, for the first time, in the SEIMC2023 Congress, held in its XXVI edition, from June 1 to 3, 2023 in Santiago de Compostela (Galicia).
In this scientific event, organized by the Spanish Society of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology, more than a thousand scientific papers were presented focusing on several areas: viral infections, sepsis, antimicrobial resistance, diagnosis and management of infectious diseases.
The scientific papers presented at the seminar by the research staff of the Genomics Area and by collaborating researchers of the Genetic Variation and Disease group of the University Hospital of Nuestra Señora de Candelaria (FIISC) were the following:
- Bioinformatics approaches to characterize the viral genomes of the cases of monkeypox detected in the Canary Islands, May 2022.
- Metagenomic approach to assess the relationship between the presence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and mortality in patients with sepsis.
- Evaluation of the reinfection rate and severity of SARSCoV-2 coronavirus disease associated with the Omicron BA.5 variant of concern in the Canary Islands (Spain).
The first paper presented a study on the characterization of the viral genome of a case of a monkeypox patient detected in the Canary Islands following the outbreak that occurred in May 2022. A metagenomic approach and several bioinformatics approaches based on short and long read sequencing technologies were used to carry out this study, comparing different processing methods. As a result, the sequence of the first MPXV viral genome isolated in the Canary Islands was obtained, corresponding to sublineage B.1, observed throughout Europe and in the rest of the non-endemic areas during the 2022 outbreak. The results of this study highlight the importance of sequencing and metagenomics in the epidemiological surveillance of emerging and re-emerging pathogens.
The second study evaluated the application of metagenomic sequencing to improve the identification of pulmonary bacterial communities, as well as to evaluate the relationship between the presence of antibiotic resistance genes and mortality in these patients. The results suggest a relationship between the early accumulation of antibiotic resistance genes in the pulmonary microbiome and increased mortality in the Intensive Care Units of patients with extrapulmonary sepsis.
The third paper presented results related to the entry of the Omicron variant in the Canary Islands. In addition, we showed the reinfection rates observed for SARS-CoV-2 variants, obtaining that the Omicron sublineages, in particular BA.5, were associated with higher reinfection rates and lower disease severity (hospital mortality at 28 days) compared to the SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern previously circulating in the archipelago.
The Congress of the Spanish Society of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology is an annual meeting of researchers, infectologists and clinicians related to the area. The congress serves to pool knowledge and share the latest scientific results on different areas of infectious diseases in the clinical setting.
More information about the Congress of the Spanish Society of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology (SEIMC2023):
