Researchers who detected the West Nile Virus (WNV) in Pakistan for the first time are calling for urgent, coordinated surveillance to assess the distribution in the country of the virus known to cause deadly neurological disease.
Spread by mosquitoes, WNV infection is generally asymptomatic. But in about 20 per cent of cases, fever, headache and vomiting develop; less than one per cent of these cases lead to potentially fatal neurological complications. The virus causes inflammation of the brain (encephalitis) or inflammation of the tissue that surrounds the brain and spinal cord (meningitis), studies show.
The researchers published their findings online last month (January) in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases. They found samples of the virus after analysing 1,070 serum samples drawn from blood donors in the Punjab province from 2016 to 2018. But when they screened 4,500 mosquito specimens collected from 2016 to 2017 from five selected districts of Punjab province, the samples tested negative for WNV — suggesting that the virus is circulating via a different route.
Read more at SciDev.net
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