Coordination meeting of EuroCigua Project

AESAN hosted the last Coordination Meeting of the EuroCigua project at their headquarters in order to explain the main results obtained, as well as to design future strategies for an adequate progress of the project. This meeting was attended by all the coordinators and stakeholders involved in the project, such as Canary Public Health Service, University of Las Palmas de Gran Canarias and the Portuguese Sea and Atmosphere Institute (IPMA).

EuroCigua is a project co-financed by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and coordinated by AESAN. The main objective of the project is to determine the prevalence of ciguatera in Europe, by means of studying the epidemiological characteristics of the cases; to assessing the presence of ciguatoxins in food & environment. And finally, to characterizing the risk: to develop methods for the detection of the presence of specimens contaminated by ciguatoxins using chromatographic techniques coupled to mass spectrometry, as well as to develop the reference materials for this characterization.

The main objective of the meeting was the follow-up and sharing of the research carried out by each sub-projects involved in the project. The areas related to sampling and analysis of fish were especially relevant, in order to collect fish with the highest CTX amount in Madeira and in the Canary Islands.

Among the main actions to be carried out in the future, highlighted the importance of the update of the ciguatera leaflet to give a greater dissemination in health center and hospitals in order to have new data of the possible ciguatera cases identified.  Another relevant topic addressed in the meeting was the sampling in hotspot with greater probability of contaminated fish and, performing a new inter-comparative analysis, where new parameters and conditions are defined in order to obtain robust and quality results.