Overview Of The West Nile Virus

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Introduction:
West Nile Virus, belong to family Flaviridae is a virus transferred by mosquitoes which was first identified in Uganda in 1937 (2). It was perceived as public health threat with epidemics of fever and encephalitis in the Middle East in the 1950’s (3). Since then there has been many sporadic outbreak in Asia, Europe, Africa, and Middle East (3). The first human cases of WNV disease in the Western Hemisphere were detected in New York City in 1999(1
). By the end of 2005, virus has a very wide established sustained transmission geographical foci from central Canada to southern Argentina making it the most widely distributed Arbovirus in the world.
In United States, virus has become enzootic in all the geographic location and has been identified in more than 95 percent of the US counties. In US alone it has been found in 65 different species of mosquitoes. The most important vectors are Cx. pipiens in the northern part of the country, Cx. quinquefasciatus in the southern part, and Cx. tarsalis in the western part where it overlaps with the Cx. pipiens and quinquefasciatus.
As of now, there are no medications or vaccines to treat or prevent WNV infection. Fortunately, most people infected with WNV will have no symptoms and less than 1% of infected people develop a serious, sometimes fatal disease.
In 2012, there were 286 death out of 5,674 reported cases of West Nile Virus in 48 states (not including Hawaii and Alaska) across United States. Among the reported cases 51 percent (2,873) were neuro-invasive i.e. cases which resulted in meningitis, encephalitis, and or acute flaccid paralysis. In 2012, the number of the reported cases of west Nile virus has been all time high since 2003 and the number of death was the highes...

... middle of paper ...

...nclusion of laboratory testing leads to a lag time between the time of reporting and the time when the actual case occurred. The collection and reporting in case of non-human surveillance varies between different regions. Hence the data collected on non-human surveillance cannot be used to compare WNV activity between geographical areas

References
Nash D, Mostashari F, Fine A, Miller J, O'Leary D, Murray K, et al. The outbreak of West Nile virus infection in the New York City area in 1999. N Engl J Med. 2001;344:1807–14.
“WHO | West Nile Virus.” WHO. Accessed January 27, 2014. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs354/en/.

Liu, Rongsong, Jiangping Shuai, Jianhong Wu, and Huaiping Zhu. “Modeling Spatial Spread of West Nile Virus and Impact of Directional Dispersal of Birds.” Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering: MBE 3, no. 1 (January 2006): 145–160.

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