Rift Valley Fever Epidemiology, Pathogenesis and Host Response
A special issue of Viruses (ISSN 1999-4915). This special issue belongs to the section "Human Virology and Viral Diseases".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 September 2022) | Viewed by 3447
Special Issue Editors
2. Department of Paraclinical Sciences, Faculty of Veterinary Sciences, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa
Interests: emerging and zoonotic viral diseases; tissue based assays; biospecimen preservation; veterinary pathology and microbiology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: viral hemorrhagic fever viruses; viral zoonotic diseases; veterinary pathology and histopathology; pathogenesis of disease; immunohistochemistry and other specialized diagnostic methods involving FFPE tissues
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Rift Valley fever phlebovirus is an arthropod-borne RNA virus that causes disease in a wide range of domestic and wild cloven-hoofed animals, camelids, and humans. Humans may become fatally infected by consuming or handling products from sick animals, including slaughtering sick livestock and handling dead fetuses.
In affected countries, Rift Valley fever (RVF) causes huge economic losses and extremely high mortality rates, especially in sheep. Epidemics are characterized by trimester-independent, near-simultaneous abortions or fetal loss in pregnant animals. In humans, vertical transmission of RVFV to the fetus correlates with an increased risk of miscarriage.
Outbreaks of RVF occur virtually every year in Africa in one or more countries. In some areas of Africa, serological data suggests that the virus circulates continuously year after year, with occasional occurrence of disease missed. The movement of virus out of areas endemic for the disease is thought to cause the occasional epidemic with marked spill-over outbreaks in humans. Livestock trade might contribute to the spread of the disease into disease-free areas. However, on numerous occasions RVFV from the same lineage has been shown to spread over long distances, sometimes at fast rates that cannot be explained by livestock trade. This heightens the concern that this emerging disease may spread beyond its initial area of endemicity into the rest of Asia, Europe, or the Americas.
A complete understanding of RVF pathogenesis and host response to infection is also still lacking. Direct tissue injury (i.e., liver, kidneys, adrenal cortex), failure of the adaptive immune response (likely exacerbated by marked loss of lymphocytes), and various innate immune responses (i.e., tissue factor synthesis) have been demonstrated. However, our understanding of the diversity of forms RVF presents across species, age groups, and individuals is woefully incomplete. Usually, human infections present as an acute self-limiting febrile illness, but some patients develop severe or fatal disease that can include hepatic disease, widespread hemorrhages, renal impairment, encephalitis, and ocular lesions. Intriguingly, while encephalitis has been experimentally reproduced in mice, rats, marmosets, and African green monkeys, it has not been described in any natural cases in ruminants.
To this Special Issue of Viruses, we invite research and review articles focused on improving our understanding of Rift Valley fever epidemiology, pathogenesis and host response including manuscripts detailing the application of new techniques and methodologies to these topics.
Dr. A. Sally Davis
Dr. Lieza Odendaal
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- rift valley fever phlebovirus
- epidemiology
- pathogenesis
- host response
- transboundary and emerging diseases
- zoonoses
- arbovirus
