RESEARCH ARTICLE
Survey of Usutu Virus Potential Vectors and their Diversity in Iran: A Neglected Emerging Arbovirus
Mehdi Khoobdel1
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2020Volume: 13
First Page: 114
Last Page: 118
Publisher ID: TOPHJ-13-114
DOI: 10.2174/1874944502013010114
Article History:
Received Date: 16/12/2019Revision Received Date: 29/02/2020
Acceptance Date: 03/3/2020
Electronic publication date: 24/04/2020
Collection year: 2020
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Introduction:
Usutu Virus (USUV) is a vector-borne flavivirus within the family of Flaviviridae; its reservoirs and vectors are birds and mosquitoes, respectively.
Methods:
At first, electronic databases were searched with a date range from 2000 to 2018 to find the Culex species that transmit the disease and then for determining the diversity of those, mosquito larvae were collected from six places in three main environmental categories using the dipping technique.
Results:
In total, 1369 specimens belonging to 10 different species were collected and identified, as follows: Cx. hortensis Ficalbi, Cx. laticinctus Edwards, Cx. mimeticus Noe, Cx. perxigus Theobald, Cx. pipiens Linnaeus, Cx. modestus Ficalbi, Cx. sinaiticus Kirkpatrick, Cx. theileri Theobald Cx. torrentium Martini and Cx. tritaeniorhynchus Giles. Four species involved as vectors of USUV in other countries are printed in bold. Cx.pipiens, as the main vector was the most frequent species in rural areas, share its larval habitats with Cx. torrentium (similarity > 0.9) and reached its peak in August. Overall, in the present study, there was a significant positive relationship between mean temperatures and abundance of mosquitoes (r = 0.75, P = 0.005).
Conclusion:
In the present study, some species involved as main vectors of USUV in other countries and their ecological features were recorded. Based on these results, the possibility of the emergence of USUV in Iran exists.
