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Article History

Received: 24 June 2025

Accepted: 6 January 2026

First Online: 5 February 2026

Declarations

:

: Ethical approval was obtained by the Institutional Review Board of the ITM (IRB reference number 1449/20), the Ethics Committee (EC) of the University Hospital in Antwerp (Belgian registration number: B3002021000025) and the EC of the Université Protestante du Congo (UPC) for the use of clinical samples collected within the FIKI² study (Clinicaltrials.gov NCT04760678). All participants gave their written informed consent. The study was conducted according to the principles stated in the Declaration of Helsinki, and to all applicable local and international regulations. Only stored samples with authorization for secondary usage were used in this study and the authorization from the local Ethical Committee was obtained. The viral RNA used for these experiments was extracted from viral culture supernatant obtained from virus isolations from returning travellers, or in the case of CHIKV, from a previous study in Aruba [ ], which were completely anonymized and cannot be linked to the original donor. The use of rodents for the expansion of T.b. gambiense LiTat 1.3 was approved by the Animal Ethics Committee (AEC) of the Institute of Tropical Medicine (ITM) under protocol TU2021-1.

: Not applicable.

: The authors declare no competing interests.