| Abstract: | Arthropod-borne viruses are a group of the most important emerging pathogens. They cause a range of diseases in vertebrate hosts and threaten human health (Gan and Leo, 2014). The global distribution of arboviruses is associated with the vector which is strongly affected by changes in environmental conditions. Dengue virus (DENV) and Chikungunya virus (CHIKV), which cause high annual infected cases and have an increasing geographic distribution, are transmitted by Aedes spp. mosquitoes, in particular Ae. albopictus and Ae. Aegypti (Presti et al., 2014; Higuera and Ramírez, 2018). Although, the main vector of dengue virus, Ae. aegypti, was not detected in Iran, other possible important vectors such as Ae. Albopictus and Ae. unilineatus were recorded (Doosti et al., 2016; Yaghoobi-Ershadi et al., 2017). West Nile virus (WNV), a member of the genus Flaviviruses, is one of the most widespread arboviruses (Chancey et al., 2015). The epidemiological evidence of WNV in different hosts in Iran was found (Bagheri et al., 2015), and the circulation of WNV in the main vector, Culex pipiens s.l. and Cx. pipiens, has been proved (Shahhosseini et al., 2017). Due to limited information on the situation of CHIKV, DENV and WNV in Iran, we performed a wide geographical investigation to determine the prevalence of IgG specific antibodies in human samples as well as the genome of WNV, CHIKV and DENV in mosquitoes. |
