Abstract
We report the detection and isolation of four almost identical strains of West Nile virus (WNV) lineage 2from Culex modestus mosquitoes collected at three fish ponds in South Moravia, Czech Republic, during August 2013. Phylogenetic analysis demonstrated that the Czech WNV strains isolated are closely related to Austrian, Italian and Serbian strains reported in 2008,2011 and 2012, respectively. Our findings show the current northernmost range of lineage 2 WNV in Europe.
Highlights
WNV is a mosquito-borne virus that is widely distributed in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and southern Europe [1] and was recently introduced in the Americas [2]
The discovery of WNV lineage 2 (WNV-2) in the Czech Republic has added another country to the list of WNV risk areas in Europe
It shows that two different lineages of WNV co-circulate in the country and that Cx. modestus mosquito is a potential vector of WNV in reed belts of South Moravian fish ponds
Summary
WNV is a mosquito-borne virus (genus Flavivirus; family Flaviviridae) that is widely distributed in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and southern Europe [1] and was recently introduced in the Americas [2]. Experimentally non-infected mothers of mice inoculated with homogenates from all three infective pools succumbed to infection seven to eight days after cannibalising their dead SM, and WNV was demonstrated by realtime RT-PCR in high concentration (107 RNA copies/ml) in the mothers’ brains but not in their livers or spleens. This finding supports the hypothesis of oral infection as a (rare) alternative route of WNV transmission, for example, in raptors. Three of the four Czech isolates were found to be neuropathogenic in SM, these virus strains do not carry the putative virulence marker P249 within the NS3 region [17,18]
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