Preliminary results of the research on the West Nile Virus from the Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve

Abstract

Since 2004, we have started to study the role of birds in transmission of West Nile Virus (WNV) in Danube Delta and Dobrogea Tableland (Fig. 1 and Fig. 6). Same, we want to understand the mechanism of the virus’ transmission, to know which environmental factors induce the emergence of WNV. The work was focusedon three main issues: monitoring of relevant environmental factors (biotic and abiotic) and gathering data on the factors from the past and correlate them with WNV human cases; harvesting ectoparasites of birds (lice and ticks) for testing, and verifying the hypothesis of their vectorial role; sampling a large number of wild and domestic birds and horses and testing to find out their seroprevalence. All our results will be integrated into the laboratory work of thecolleagues from the Cantacuzino Institute (they deal especially with mosquitoes research - positive species, qualitative and quantitative composition). Up to now we detected seroprevalence in birds and horses, the increasing the number of the species involved on WNV transmission and gathered relevant information on environmental factors. Sampling of birds and horses will continue for another two years in order to clarify the mechanism of emergence and dissemination of WNV.

Keywords

• EDEN
• West Nile Virus
• vector and reservoir species
• samples
• seroprevalence
• seroconversion