Sindbis fever
Sindbis fever is a febrile illness of humans in Africa, Asia, Australia, MiddleEast, Eastern Europe, Scandinavia and the Commonwealth of Independent States, transmitted by culicine mosquitoes and is caused by the Sindbis virus.
Sindbis fever is sometimes also called epidemic polyarthritis, Sindbis virus disease or SIN. It is most common in South and East Africa, Egypt, Israel, Philippines and is also found in other parts of the world.
Sindbis virus was first isolated in Egypt, the Sindbis health district, 30 km north of Cairo in August 1952 from a pool of mosquitoes (Culex pipiens and C.univittatus). It belongs to the genus Alphavirus, family Togaviridae and is maintained in nature by transmission between vertebrate hosts (mammals, birds) and invertebrate vectors (Anopheles, Culex, Aedes, Culiseta and other mosquitoes). The Sindbis virus genome is a single-stranded RNA of 11,703 kb long. Sindbis virus is able to survive in blood up to 2 days at room temperature.
Humans are infected with Sindbis virus when bitten by an infected mosquito. Infection is characterized by coincident onset of fever with rash (vesicular exanthema) and arthritic pain (arthralgia), with headaches, general weakness or malaise also common. Rash averagely lasts around 10 days, but quite often no clinical disease manifestations are recognized at all.
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