29 30 Background: Research with high biocontainment pathogens such as Rift Valley fever virus 31 (RVFV) and Lassa virus (LASV) is expensive, potentially hazardous, and limited to select 32 institutions. Surrogate pathogens such as Punta Toro virus (PTV) for RVFV infection and 33 Pichinde virus (PICV) for LASV infection allow research to be performed under more 34 permissive BSL-2 conditions. Al...

Newcastle disease virus (NDV) is an avian virus that is being evaluated as a vaccine vector for the delivery of foreign genes in mammals. The use of NDV as a vaccine vector in these species offers two major advantages. First, NDV is highly attenuated in mammals, rendering its use inherently safe. Second, mammals lack pre-existing NDV immunity, which minimizes the risk of vaccination failure. ND...

Rift Valley fever phlebovirus (RVFV) infects humans and a wide range of ungulates historically has caused devastating epidemics in Africa the Arabian Peninsula. Lesions naturally infected cases (RVF) have only been described detail sheep with few reports concerning cattle humans. The most frequently observed lesion both ruminants is randomly distributed necrosis, particularly liver. supportive ...

Diagnosis of Rift Valley fever (RVF) is based on serology and virus isolation. The disadvantages of the former include poor sensitivity, high cost, risks associated with using infectious virus as antigen, the lengthy duration of ELISA as well as cross-reactivity with other Phleboviruses. We developed, optimised and evaluated a one-tube reverse-transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) fo...

In October 2009, two-3 months after an outbreak of a febrile disease with joint pain on the eastern coast of Madagascar, we assessed serologic markers for chikungunya virus (CHIKV), dengue virus (DENV), and Rift Valley fever virus (RVFV) in 1,244 pregnant women at 6 locations. In 2 eastern coast towns, IgG seroprevalence against CHIKV was 45% and 23%; IgM seroprevalence was 28% and 5%. IgG sero...

The bunyavirus genome comprises a small (S), medium (M), and large (L) RNA segment of negative polarity. Although genome segmentation confers evolutionary advantages by enabling genome reassortment events with related viruses, genome segmentation also complicates genome replication and packaging. Accumulating evidence suggests that genomes of viruses with eight or more genome segments are incor...

In this article, we discuss the structural and practical identifiability of a nested immuno-epidemiological model of arbovirus diseases, where host-vector transmission rate, host recovery, and disease-induced death rates are governed by the within-host immune system. We incorporate the newest ideas and the most up-to-date features of numerical methods to fit multi-scale models to multi-scale da...

Rift Valley fever virus (RVFV) is a member of the genus Phlebovirus within the family Bunyaviridae. It can cause severe epidemics among ruminants and fever, myalgia, a hemorrhagic syndrome, and/or encephalitis in humans. The RVFV M segment encodes the NSm and 78-kDa proteins and two major envelope proteins, Gn and Gc. The biological functions of the NSm and 78-kDa proteins are unknown; both pro...

Background: Rift Valley Fever (RVF) is a zoonotic disease that affects both animals and humans. Under reporting, misdiagnosis caused by the broad spectrum of symptoms presented disease, limited access to rapid accurate laboratory confirmation have led an undefined burden RVF. Reports are available show circulation virus during inter-epidemic periods, implying endemic RVFV. This study aimed dete...