Arthropod-Borne Flavivirus Infections: One-Health Approaches in Epidemiology, Pathogenesis, Diagnosis, Prevention, and Treatment

Dear Colleagues,

Flaviviruses are arthropod-borne RNA viruses that can infect humans. Although these viruses mostly cause asymptomatic infections, they can also cause febrile illnesses with a wide spectrum of clinical presentations, from mild to potentially severe, including encephalitis, hepatitis, renal failure, vascular shock syndrome, congenital abnormalities, and death.

Mosquito-borne flaviviruses such as dengue virus and West Nile virus have shown extensive spread and epidemic transmission globally in the last several decades, and they annually infect up to several hundred million people. Yellow fever virus remains endemic in many parts of the world, despite the availability of an effective vaccine. Zika virus usually causes asymptomatic infections but may cause severe congenital malformations if infection occurs during pregnancy.

Tick-borne flaviviruses are principally located in regions of Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, northern China, and Japan. This group includes the tick-borne encephalitis virus which causes several thousand human cases per year. However, the number of cases is increasing due to climate changes, population dynamics, the range of permissive ticks, and shifts in land usage.

However, some neglected flaviviruses such as the Usutu virus may emerge and re-emerge and represent a public health risk. 

The transmission of arboviruses depends on vector biology and climate anomalies. It is important to prevent, detect and treat vector-borne flavivirus infections since the combined effect of the COVID-19 and flavivirus outbreaks could seriously impact populations at risk. Since it is difficult to predict the emergence or re-emergence of a particular pathogen in the human population, it is important to raise awareness among healthcare workers to consider the differential diagnosis of flavivirus infections in people living in or returning from endemic areas. However, a multidisciplinary approach is needed to better understand this field. Therefore, it is important to implement the “One Health” approach from disciplines concerning animal, human and environmental health to reduce the disease burden.

We would like to invite colleagues investigating any of the arthropod-borne flaviviruses within the areas of their ecology, genomics, immunology, detection, public health, and epidemiology to submit their manuscripts to this Special Issue in the form of original research and reviews.

Dr. Irena Tabain
Dr. Vladimir Savic
Guest Editors

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• flavivirus
• epidemiology
• arboviruses
• one health
• arthropod vector