Arbovirus Diagnostics

Dear Colleagues,

Over the last few decades, the emergence and re-emergence of arboviruses have posed a considerable global health threat. Many arboviruses are expanding their geographical areas of circulation, causing epidemic outbreaks no longer confined to tropical and sub-tropical regions.

Overlapping in clinical syndromes and arbovirus co-circulation make clinical diagnosis difficult. Molecular testing is considered the gold standard for arbovirus laboratory diagnosis, despite the short duration of viremia. Closely related arboviruses may show a large amount of cross-reactivity in serological diagnostic tests, triggered by both natural infection and vaccination. All these issues contribute to making diagnosis of arboviruses-associated diseases a great challenge.

In this context, the availability of both first-line, rapid, POC tests and confirmation tests by expert reference laboratory networks is of utmost importance to ensure accurate diagnosis, which is crucial for patient management, rapid adoption of vector control measures, and collection of epidemiological data.

This Special Issue will be devoted to the state of the art and the latest developments in the diagnosis of arboviruses and emerging virus infections. We particularly invite the submission of articles that describe:

• The development of innovative methods for the diagnosis of arboviruses and other emerging viruses;
• The development of new assays that can discriminate between different arboviral infections;
• The implementation of metagenomic pipelines as a tool for genomic surveillance and the detection of infections and co-infections in human, animal, and vector samples;
• The evaluation of rapid, first-line, POC tests according to the evolution of the epidemiological situation at a global level.

Dr. Giulietta Venturi
Dr. Claudia Fortuna
Dr. Giulia Marsili
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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