Solignat Maxime, Gay Bernard, Higgs Stephen, Briant Laurence, Devaux Christian
Université Montpellier 1, Centre d'études d'agents Pathogènes et Biotechnologies pour la Santé (CPBS), Montpellier, France.
Virology. 2009 Oct 25;393(2):183-97. doi: 10.1016/j.virol.2009.07.024. Epub 2009 Sep 4.
Arboviruses (or arthropod-borne viruses), represent a threat for the new century. The 2005-2006 year unprecedented epidemics of chikungunya virus (CHIKV) in the French Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean, followed by several outbreaks in other parts of the world such as India, have attracted the attention of clinicians, scientists, and state authorities about the risks linked to this re-emerging mosquito-borne virus. CHIKV, which belongs to the Alphaviruses genus, was not previously regarded as a highly pathogenic arbovirus. However, this opinion was challenged by the death of several CHIKV-infected persons in Reunion Island. The epidemic episode began in December 2005 and four months later the seroprevalence survey report indicated that 236,000 persons, more than 30% of Reunion Island population, had been infected with CHIKV, among which 0.4-0.5% of cases were fatal. Since the epidemic peak, the infection case number has continued to increase to almost 40% of the population, with a total of more than 250 fatalities. Although information available on CHIKV is growing quite rapidly, we are still far from understanding the strategies required for the ecologic success of this virus, virus replication, its interactions with its vertebrate hosts and arthropod vectors, and its genetic evolution. In this paper, we summarize the current knowledge of CHIKV genomic organization, cell tropism, and the virus replication cycle, and evaluate the possibility to predict its future evolution. Such understanding may be applied in order to anticipate future epidemics and reduce the incidence by development and application of, for example, vaccination and antiviral therapy.
虫媒病毒（或节肢动物传播病毒）是新世纪面临的一大威胁。2005 - 2006年，印度洋法属留尼汪岛出现了前所未有的基孔肯雅病毒（CHIKV）疫情，随后在印度等世界其他地区也发生了几次疫情爆发，这引起了临床医生、科学家和国家当局对这种重新出现的蚊媒病毒相关风险的关注。CHIKV属于甲病毒属，以前并不被视为高致病性虫媒病毒。然而，留尼汪岛几名感染CHIKV的人死亡对这一观点提出了挑战。疫情于2005年12月开始，四个月后的血清流行率调查报告显示，留尼汪岛超过30%的人口，即23.6万人感染了CHIKV，其中0.4 - 0.5%的病例死亡。自疫情高峰以来，感染病例数持续增加，几乎达到人口的40%，死亡总数超过250人。尽管关于CHIKV的可用信息增长迅速，但我们距离了解该病毒在生态上成功的策略、病毒复制、其与脊椎动物宿主和节肢动物载体的相互作用以及其基因进化仍有很大差距。在本文中，我们总结了目前对CHIKV基因组结构、细胞嗜性和病毒复制周期的认识，并评估预测其未来进化的可能性。这种认识可用于预测未来疫情，并通过开发和应用例如疫苗接种和抗病毒治疗来降低发病率。
