Vector-Borne Diseases’ Emergent Threat for Horses

Many diseases were once considered geographically restricted. But disease migration has eliminated that complacency.
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Vector-borne diseases represent a singularly serious threat to the health of humans and domestic livestock species in countries or regions of the world in which they occur. Historically, many such diseases were frequently regarded as geographically restricted in their global distribution and not considered a risk to human and animal populations in far-distant countries in other continents or possibly other hemispheres. Major disease migrations in the last 20 years, however, have undermined that sense of security. No longer can the future distribution of specific infectious agents be predicted with confidence.

This was most recently exemplified by the explosive and unexpected spread of Chikungunya and Zika viruses, both human pathogens, from where they were originally identified in Africa many years ago.

Concerns are further highlighted by the risk of spreading yellow fever from Angola, Republic of Congo, and Uganda to European Union member states and even further afield to intertropical zones in the Americas and Asia. The most significant group of emerging human and animal diseases is caused by arboviruses such as West Nile, Chikungunya, and Zika; they are single stranded RNA viruses which have spontaneous mutation rates as high as one base per 1,000 bases for each replication cycle. Arboviruses are transmitted in nature by arthropod vectors.

With the exception of African swine fever virus, all arboviruses of medical or veterinary medical importance belong to one of the following four families: Bunyaviridae, Flaviviridae, Reoviridae, and Togaviridae. They are maintained in nature by cycling between a host (mammal, bird, reptile, amphibian) that is infected with a particular virus and a vector (mosquito, tick, sandfly, midge) that is a carrier and transmits the virus to other hosts

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