West Nile virus (WNV) and Lyme disease have emerged as significant public health concerns in many parts of Canada. Vector-borne diseases (VBDs) are susceptible to climate change changing weather patterns because mosquitoes’ ticks’ lifecycles significantly impacted by temperature, precipitation, humidity. Over the last several decades, related Windsor-Essex County demonstrate tendencies for furt...

Herein we demonstrate that infection of mice with West Nile virus (WNV) Eg101 provides protective immunity against lethal challenge with WNV NY99. Our data demonstrated that WNV Eg101 is largely non-virulent in adult mice when compared to WNV NY99. By day 6 after infection, WNV-specific IgM and IgG antibodies, and neutralizing antibodies were detected in the serum of all WNV Eg101 infected mice...

The neuroinflammatory response to West Nile virus (WNV) infection can be either protective or pathological depending on the context. Although several studies have examined chemokine profiles within brains of WNV-infected mice, little is known about how various cell types within the central nervous system (CNS) contribute to chemokine expression. Here, we assessed chemokine expression in brain m...

BACKGROUND West Nile virus (WNV) can be transmitted by transfusion through infected blood components. In Germany, a 28-day deferral for blood donors of therapeutic blood components who had spent at least 2 days in WNV-endemic areas from June 1 to November 30, 2014 was enforced. Otherwise, screening of blood donors for WNV RNA or the application of pathogen reduction techniques are appropriate a...

West Nile Virus (WNV) antibody development and persistence were investigated in blood donors who made WNV RNA-positive (viremic) donations in 2003. Plasma samples from the index donations and follow-up serum or plasma samples were tested for WNV immunoglobulin M (IgM), IgA, and IgG by using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays. Antibody development was investigated with 154 samples collected from...

Two commercially available West Nile virus (WNV) detection assays (RAMP WNV test, Response Biomedical Corp., Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada; and VecTest WNV antigen assay, Medical Analysis Systems, Inc., Camarillo, CA) were compared for sensitivity, specificity, and ability to detect WNV in field-collected mosquito pools. Serially diluted stock seed WNV and St. Louis encephalitis virus (SLEV...

BACKGROUND A case of West Nile virus (WNV) encephalitis associated with transfusion of blood that did not react when tested for WNV by minipool (MP) nucleic acid testing (NAT) is described. A Nebraska man developed clinical encephalitis 13 days after surgery and transfusion of 26 blood components. Antibody testing confirmed WNV infection. An investigation was initiated to determine the source o...

The molecular basis for the increased resistance of astrocytes to a non-neuropathogenic strain of West Nile virus (WNV), WNV-MAD78, compared with the neuropathogenic strain WNV-NY remains unclear. Here, we demonstrated that the reduced susceptibility of astrocytes to WNV-MAD78 is due to a combination of both cellular activities as well as viral determinants. Analyses of the viral particle indic...