A hospital in the Dutch city of Nijmegen has placed twelve of its own medical staff into a six-week quarantine after blood and urine samples from a hantavirus patient were processed without the maximum level of safety procedures.

Key Takeaways:

• Twelve Radboudumc staff face a six-week quarantine after lab samples were handled under standard — rather than maximum — biosafety procedures.
• The WHO now counts nine confirmed hantavirus cases linked to the cruise ship Hondius, plus two suspected cases and three deaths.
• Health authorities stress the situation is not comparable to COVID-19, since hantavirus rarely passes between people.

The Radboudumc facility called the step purely precautionary, insisting the chance of any actual infection among the team is very low and that day-to-day patient care has not been disrupted.

The incident shows how difficult it is to switch hospitals over to a tougher rulebook on short notice, particularly when the pathogen involved is the same strain tied to the outbreak aboard the luxury cruise ship Hondius. The patient at the heart of the Nijmegen case was a passenger from that voyage, admitted on May 7.

Speaking to the Dutch parliament, Health Minister Sophie Hermans explained what went wrong. “What happened … is that strict procedures were followed, but not the very strictest procedures that apply in cases involving this hantavirus,” she said. “The likelihood that staff have been infected as a result is small, but because we know we are dealing with a serious virus, (the hospital) has said: we will play it safe.”

She drew a sharp line between the current scare and the early days of the pandemic. “It really is a different situation than with COVID. With the knowledge we have and the measures we are taking, we are confident we can keep this virus under control,” Hermans told lawmakers.

The cluster grows, but slowly

The World Health Organization lifted its confirmed case count to nine, two higher than the day before. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said additional patients are likely given how long the virus can lie dormant before symptoms appear, but he was clear that this is not a pandemic and bears no resemblance to COVID-19. Hantavirus can kill, yet it rarely jumps from one person to another.

So far, three people have died since the outbreak began: a Dutch couple and a German citizen. The virus is normally carried by wild rodents, with human-to-human transmission limited to rare cases of very close contact.

On top of the nine confirmed infections, the WHO is tracking two suspected ones — a patient who died before testing could be done, and another on Tristan da Cunha, a remote island in the South Atlantic where no tests are available. Every known case so far appears to have picked up the virus during the cruise or just before boarding. Tedros said all suspected patients have been isolated and are receiving close medical supervision to cut off any chain of transmission.

“At the moment, there is no sign that we are seeing the start of a larger outbreak, but of course the situation could change and given the long incubation period of the virus, it’s possible we might see more cases in the coming weeks,” he said. Tedros noted that passengers had spent considerable time mingling on board before anyone knew the virus was present.

The ship sails home

The Hondius itself left Spain’s Canary Islands on Monday evening, after the last of its passengers had stepped off. Twenty-five crew members along with a doctor and a nurse remain on board for the journey north. Ship owner Oceanwide Expeditions expects the vessel to dock in the Netherlands by May 17.

Tedros said authorities have managed to locate every passenger who disembarked at earlier points in the cruise, and that each country now bears responsibility for stopping any onward spread.

A trial run for post-COVID cooperation

Italy’s leading infectious diseases hospital announced it will analyse biological samples from a man who had been near the Dutch woman who died of hantavirus, making him the latest potential case to enter the international tracking system.

Arnaud Fontanet, head of Epidemiology of Emerging Diseases at France’s Pasteur Institute, told Reuters that the search for new patients could stretch on for months because the incubation window runs up to six weeks. Even so, he expects no more than a few dozen additional cases overall, given how poorly the virus transmits between humans. For him, the outbreak doubles as an exercise: “is a good way for us to try to test all that has been done since COVID-19,” to see whether the channels of international coordination actually work.

Spain confirmed on Monday night that one of its nationals had tested positive, part of a group of fourteen people quarantining at a military hospital in Madrid. The thirteen others returned negative results on Tuesday. A French passenger who tested positive after the ship reached the Canary Islands on Sunday is in intensive care but stable.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said eighteen Hondius passengers had been flown back to the United States and put into quarantine. One of them, who returned a weakly positive test, is now in a biocontainment unit in Nebraska.

Written by Vytautas Valinskas

HIV exhausts the body’s immune system by overactivating it, despite effective antiviral treatment. Researchers from Linköping University have conducted cell studies showing that an existing medication restores immune cell function. The findings raise hopes that this medication could improve the health of people living with HIV.

For people living with HIV, antiviral treatment is effective in limiting the amount of virus in the blood and slowing the progression of AIDS. But the virus can stay hidden in the body for many years and contribute to premature ageing of the immune system. Despite effective treatment, the immune system is commonly impaired in people with HIV. Linköping University researchers therefore investigated how the virus causes dysregulation of the immune system.

In healthy people infected with a virus, a protein called type I interferon is activated that plays a very important role in the body’s immune system. Type I interferon is the first protection against viral infections and also ensures that other parts of the immune system kick in. Once the infection is combated, the amount of type I interferon falls back to a very low level.

In their study, the researchers show how HIV exploits the body’s type I interferon signalling to drive chronic immune activation, also when the virus is under control due to medication.

“In the case of an HIV infection, type I interferon provides protection in the first stage when the body gets infected. But if the interferon is chronically activated, an overactivation of the immune system will instead facilitate the spread of HIV in the body,” says Cecilia Svanberg, postdoctoral fellow at Linköping University and lead author of the study, published in the journal PLOS pathogens.

May be treateable

A chronically activated immune system eventually leads to several different types of cells in the immune system becoming exhausted and less effective. Two important cell types affected are dendritic cells and T cells.

The researchers’ experiments on human cells showed that the chronic activation of interferon occurs precisely when dendritic cells and T cells are in contact with each other. This opens up an opportunity to restore immune cell function.

“When we treated the cells with a medication currently used to treat another disease, this perfectly restored the function of the immune cells. It looks just like when HIV is not present,” says Cecilia Svanberg.

The medication, anifrolumab, blocks type 1 interferon and is used to treat systemic lupus erythematosus, SLE, an autoimmune disease. Other research groups have conducted studies on animals with HIV-like infections, treating them with either anifrolumab or other substances with the same function. The amount of HIV virus in the blood has decreased and the animals’ health has improved.

“Using this interferon blocker together with existing antiviral treatment could possibly improve the health of people living with HIV. We think it would be worth investigating further,” says Marie Larsson, professor of virology at Linköping University, who led the study.

The study was funded by, among others, the Swedish Research Council and Region Östergötland.

Article: HIV-1 derived oligonucleotides induce a type I IFN/STING dependent immune suppression reversible by targeting IFNARI, Cecilia Svanberg, Ravi Prasad Mukku, Sabri O. Besler, Francis R. Hopkins, Christopher Sjöwall, Sofia Nyström, Esaki M. Shankar and Marie Larsson, PLOS Pathogens, published online on 13 January 2026, doi: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1013868

Written by Karin Söderlund Leifler

Source: Linköping University

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Playing a little extra with your dog improves the emotional bond between owner and dog, according to a new study from Linköping University. However, training did not give the same results. The study is relevant for all dog owners, whether they have young or adult dogs.

The function of play is not fully understood in research, especially in dogs that continue to play even in adulthood. In a new study published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, researchers at LiU have investigated whether there is a direct connection between play and a stronger emotional bond between owner and dog.

“Today, many dogs change homes in the middle of their lives. With rescue dogs, you don’t have the advantage of growing up with your dog. This means that you miss the so-called socialisation window early in your puppy’s life, which is important for relationship building. And then play can be a very good way to build a new good relationship even with adult dogs,” says Lina Roth, senior associate professor of ethology at LiU.

To find out if there is a connection, dog owners were asked to answer a comprehensive questionnaire about how they experience their relationship with their dog. Examples of questions include: How often do you take your dog with you when you visit other people? How often do you feel that dog ownership is more trouble than it’s worth? How often do you tell your dog things that you don’t tell anyone else?

“A great result”

The owner-dog pairs were then divided into three groups: one group that was tasked with playing more than usual, one group that had to train more than usual with rewards in the form of treats, and a control group that would continue as before. The owners then had to answer the same questionnaire again.

“This is a great result that you can only dream of! It turned out that the play group improved their emotional bond to the dog in just four weeks with a few minutes of extra play a day, “says Lina Roth.

The results showed a statistically significant causal relationship where the emotional bond to the dog is improved by increasing the time of play. The other two groups, however, showed no improvement compared to before.

Throwing a ball is not enough

The study mainly shows how the owners experience the relationship and cannot say much about the dog’s experiences. However, the owners in the play group reported that their dogs seemed to get a more positive view of their owners, and that the dogs themselves took more initiatives for play. Previous studies have also shown that dogs feel better when they get to play and spend time with their owners.

The different groups were given clear instructions on how play and training should be done. In this way, the researchers were able to ensure that the owners actually played with their dog. According to Lina Roth, the most important thing is to find a game that the dog responds positively to and that play time together becomes pleasant.

“Just throwing a ball isn’t enough. As we were after the social interaction between dog and human, the games we proposed in the study were for example tug-of-war, rough and tumble, chasing each other, hide-and-seek, peekaboo or teasing the dog a little with your fingers. You don’t have to keep at it for long, it’s more about paying attention to your dog’s behaviour. A few minutes every now and then seems to make a big difference,” says Lina Roth.

Article: Play interactions improve the dog-owner relationship, Per Jensen, Caisa Persson-Werme, Lina S.V. Roth, Royal Society Open Science, published online 22 April 2026. DOI: 10.1098/rsos.252294

About the study: Out of a total of 1667 volunteers who participated in the treatment study, 408 pairs met the criteria for analysable questionnaire responses. One such criterion was showing a sufficiently increased time of play for at least eight days.

Written by Anders Törneholm

Source: Linköping University

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