Many more infected by TBE virus than previously known

The number of infections by the tick-borne TBE virus that are not detected by health services is far higher than previously assumed. This has been shown in a new study of Swedish blood donors from Uppsala University and the University Hospital in Uppsala. The results have been published in the journal Eurosurveillance, which is associated with the EU’s Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. “We were very surprised that such a high proportion of the blood donors showed traces of a previous TBE virus infection. This is far more than could have been suspected based on the number of reported cases,” says Bo Albinsson, doctoral student at Uppsala University, one of the first authors of the article. Tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) is a very serious disease that is increasingly common in large parts of Europe. According to statistics from the Public Health Agency of Sweden, 597 cases of the disease had been reported...