Clinf RII - Epidemiology and societal effects of infectious diseases in Russia

CLINF (Climate-change Effects on the Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases and the Associated Impacts on Northern Societies) is a Nordic Centre of excellence within the NordForsk programme ”Responsible development in the Arctic”. The aim is to identify and investigate the influence of climate change on the geographical distribution and epidemiology of infectious diseases of relevance for humans and animals in the Nordic region and Russia.

In the CLINF RII-project, running 2019-2020 the aim is to expand the cooperation with Russia. Here, SVA collaborate mainly with the Federal Research Centre for Virology and Microbiology (CVM), Vladimir region, www.vniivvim.ru  Animal disease data has been collected up to 30 years backwards, for about 10 potentially climate sensitive infections from several Russian regions. In addition, to gain new knowledge on the infections present among animals in the north semi-domesticated reindeer has been sampled in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. In Iceland wild reindeer has been sampled. Screening for infections has been done using next generation sequencing (NGS) analyses. The results are under evaluation. Researchers from CVM in Russia has been visiting SVA and trained at SLU to perform laboratory analyses on Brucella. The LUKE research institute in Finland has performed sampling of reindeer in two different districts in Yakutsk, Eastern Siberia. In addition, CVM supported with samples from reindeer in the Yamal region, collected in connection to the outbreak of anthrax in 2016. These samples from reindeer are now analysed for Brucella. Brucellosis is a serious zoonotic disease and the results from reindeer will be compared with retrospective disease data from both humans and animals in the same area. Also, both in 2018 and 2019 we have arranged seminar at SVA/SLU focusing on serious infectious diseases for humans and animals, with presentations of Russian and Swedish participants. A workshop with the same focus is under preparation to be performed in Russia in the spring 2020. An international workshop with focus on writing manuscripts in common was arranged 2018. Two scientific publications in cooperation with the Russian researchers has been published 2019. One of these is an attempt to identify climate sensitive infections by performing an extensive literature review and the other is about pesti virus infections in reindeer from the Nordic countries and Russia.