Unobserved components, Phillips curve, Inflation forecasts, Reliability,

Despite previous detection of Chlamydia pecorum in sporadic ovine abortions, published descriptions of naturally occurring infections with fetoplacental lesions are lacking. This report provides the first descriptions of severe necrosuppurative chorionitis with vasculitis, and fetal pyelonephritis and enteritis in late-term abortions of maiden ewes. Chlamydial infection was detected using a Chlamydia genus-specific qPCR (quantitative polymerase chain reaction) on tissue extracts from 3 fetuses. C. pecorum was identified using a targeted qPCR assay, which also determined infectious load within fetal tissues. The presence of viable C. pecorum in fetal samples was confirmed by cell culture. Multilocus sequence typing (MLST) data indicated that the C. pecorum strains from each fetus were identical and of sequence type (ST) 23. Chlamydia sp. immunohistochemistry showed strong positive immunolabeling of fetoplacental lesions. Other infectious abortigenic agents were excluded with specific testing. This report confirms C. pecorum as a likely cause of ovine abortion and provides the first descriptions of associated fetoplacental lesions in naturally infected sheep.

This paper -which takes into consideration overall experience with the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) as well as the improvements made to this measure of inflation since 2003 -finds that the HICP continues to fulfil the prerequisites for the index underlying the ECB's definition of price stability. Nonetheless, there is scope for enhancing the HICP, especially by including owneroccupied housing (OOH) using the net acquisitions approach. Filling this longstanding gap is of utmost importance to increase the coverage and cross-country comparability of the HICP. In addition to integrating OOH into the HICP, further improvements would be welcome in harmonisation, especially regarding the treatment of product replacement and quality adjustment. Such measures may also help reduce the measurement bias that still exists in the HICP. Overall, a knowledge gap concerning the exact size of the measurement bias of the HICP remains, which calls for further research. More generally, the paper also finds that auxiliary inflation measures can play an important role in the ECB's economic and monetary analyses. This applies not only to analytical series including OOH, but also to measures of underlying inflation or a cost of living index.

Chlamydia pecorum is a common gastrointestinal inhabitant of livestock but infections can manifest in a broad array of clinical presentations and in a range of host species. While C. pecorum is a known cause of ovine abortion, clinical cases have only recently been described in detail. Here, the prevalence and sequence types (STs) of C. pecorum in ewes from a property experiencing high levels of perinatal mortality (PNM) in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, were investigated using serological and molecular methods. Ewes that were PNM+ were statistically more likely to test seropositive compared to PNM− ewes and displayed higher antibody titres; however, an increase in chlamydial shedding from either the rectum, vagina or conjunctiva of PNM+ ewes was not observed. Multilocus sequence typing (MLST) indicated that C. pecorum ST23 was the major ST shed by ewes in the flock, was the only ST identified from the vaginal site, and was the same ST detected within aborted foetal tissues. Whole genome sequencing of C. pecorum isolated from one abortion case revealed that the C. pecorum plasmid (pCpec) contained a unique deletion in coding sequence 1 (CDS1) that was also present in C. pecorum ST23 shed from the ewes. A further unique deletion was noted in a polymorphic membrane protein gene (pmpG) of the C. pecorum chromosome, which warrants further investigation given the role of PmpG in host cell adherence and tissue tropism.This study describes novel infection parameters in a sheep flock experiencing C. pecorum-associated perinatal mortality, provides the first genomic data from an abortigenic C. pecorum strain, and raises questions about possible links between unique genetic features of this strain and C. pecorum abortion.