Investigation of Tick- and Mosquito-Borne Flaviviruses in Blacksea Region

Species within the Flavivirus genus pose public health problems around the world. Increasing cases of Dengue and Japanese encephalistis virus in Asia, frequent outbreaks of Yellow fever virus in Africa and South America, and the ongoing spread of West Nile virus throughout the America, show the geographical burden of flavivirus diseases. In this study, a total of 2340 adult ticks (675 hard tick pools) collected from the variety of mammalian species (cattle, sheep, goat and buffalo) and 3226 mosquitoes (142 mosquito pools) including Culex spp., Anopheles spp., Aedes spp., and Culicoides spp., trapped in Blacksea region of northern Turkey were surveyed for the presence of RNA from mosquito-borne flaviviruses (MBFV) and tick-borne flaviviruses (TBFV) by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assay. No flavivirus genomic RNA was detected in these samples. This is the first study about both the TBFV and MBFV infections in Turkey.