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Bonjour Gilles PialouxI am a teacher of infectious and tropical diseases at Tenon hospital and Sorbonne University. I am delighted to find you on Medscape France For a small partial and biased account of ESCMID.
ESCMID is the European conference for microbiology and infectious diseases that took place this year in Vienna in Austria and which is essential. This world congress welcomes around 10,000 people. On the program, see, there are 20 parallel sessions in a huge congress palace in Vienna.
You had to make choices for this blog. I mainly did that of French communications but not only.
The Vrs leads the dance
The first star subject, I would say Escmid 2025, is the syncytial respiratory virus (VRS). Epidemiologically, VRS infection induces 60 to 90% of bronchiolitis cases in infants and also affects adults. There are 480,000 cases per year in France in children and at 15,000 to 20,000 cases in adults. However, we have witnessed a communication which shows that infection increases between 2.7 and 3 mortality in adults with comorbidities[1].
Also, Eeva Broberg (ECDC, WO 128) has drawn up a table of European epidemiology with 245,000 annual admissions to the children’s hospital under the age of 5, which represents 1.8% of European risk -free children who are hospitalized in the first year of life due to the VRS. Risk factors are prematurity, immunodeficiency, Down’s syndrome …
There has obviously been a lot of data on the use of Nirsvimab, the Beyfortus with a country that has been shown as the exemplary country: Chile. Chile has a national immunization program by Nirsevimab which enabled coverage of 83 to 98% of the country in 2024. It is quite surprising and it resulted in a reduction of 86% of admissions in intensive care for children and 75% of hospitalizations with zero death. So it is indeed a model.
Data has been published in France by the Epi-Phare group. In parallel results have been disclosed on progress and vaccination efficiency that is offered to pregnant women in particular.
In this context of selection pressure, one of the flagship communications was that of Pr Fourati Slimwho is virologist at Henri Mondor Hospital. This is a communication on POLYRES (INSERM, ANRS MIE, Institut Pasteur)[2] which is the first observational study in real life on mutations in resistance to Nirsévimab. It took place during the 2023-2024 winter season but it continued in the 2024 2025 season.
It made it possible to compare in a prospective multicenter study, the genetics of VRS strains in children exposed or not exposed to Nirsvimab.
There was a dominance of the VRS type A which was in the majority (87% of infected children). It turns out that the mutations are exceptional.
They were described in 2 cases out of 24 of children exposed to the monoclonal antibody. One was a double mutation that had never been described before. This low prevalence of mutations is both comforting but very much justifies that this type of genomic surveillance is continued.
A point on the human metapneumovirus
Another fairly noticed French communication from Paul Loubet (Chu de Nîmes)[3] concerned the circulation of metapneumovirus (HMPV). The objective of this study was to compare the profile and the future of hospitalized patients for an HMPV, VRS or flu virus infection, in 5 French CHU between 2012 and 2022. Against this infection, the search for Vrs-HMPV combined vaccines is underway. We expect a lot.
-In favor of a more systematic screening of STIs
Another subject, concerning the STIs this time, Cécile BébéarDirector of the Bacterial IST CNR in France, who is also president of the IST coordinated action at the ANRS Emerging infectious diseases, made a very good communication on the burden of Chlamydia Trachomatis.
She replaced this epidemic in context: or should we systematically detect this type of infection, especially in people with risk practices? The benefits are that the transmission, incidence, prevalence, complications of infection are decreased. The drawbacks are the increase in the consumption of antibiotics, the potential increase in multi -resistance and an impact possibly psychological.
Cécile Bébéar has shown that European recommendations are clearly in favor of screening unlike what is called the Belgium statement (The Belgians have decided not to monitor men every 3 months with sex with men under PREP). This subject is debated but the European recommendations which have been released very recently in l’International journal of STD & AIDS In 2025 suggested testing and detecting. They recommend several therapeutic lines, doxycycline on the front line, azythromycin in 2nd line and possibly in the 3rd line erythromycin, levofloxacin or ofloxacin. This is a very important point of this communication.
Finally, there have been other communications on gonococcal vaccine research and on new antibiotics in the treatment of gonococci.
Note that French communication from the team Thierry Prazuck et Guillaume Béraud (Orleans) has very clearly shown that there was a correlation between the gonococcal viral load and the intensity of the symptoms. There too we were on a tendency to screening rather than following the recommendations of Belgium statement.
This is a small partial view of Escmid. I hope it made you want to go to the site where you can still look at the podcasts. THANKS.
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