West Nile virus lineage 2 isolated from Culex modestus mosquitoes in the Czech Republic, 2013: expansion of the European WNV endemic area to the North?

• Authors: RUDOLF Ivo; BAKONYI Tamás; SEBESTA Oldřich; MENDEL Jan; PESKO Juraj; BETÁŠOVÁ Lenka; BLAŽEJOVÁ Hana; VENCLÍKOVÁ Kristýna; STRAKOVÁ Petra; NOWOTNY Norbert; HUBÁLEK Zdeněk
• Year of publication: 2014
• Type: Article in Periodical
• Magazine / Source: EUROSURVEILLANCE
• MU Faculty or unit: Faculty of Science
• Field: Epidemiology, infectious diseases and clinical immunology
• Keywords: West Nile virus; West Nile fever; Flaviviridae; Culex modestus; surveillance; Czechland
• Description: We report the detection and isolation of four almost identical strains of West Nile virus (WNV) lineage 2 from 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. In South Moravia in the Czech Republic, surveillance activities for mosquitoes and mosquito-borne pathogens have been carried out for several decades, but until our findings in 2013 presented here, WNV lineage 2 (WNV-2) had not been detected.