The Dengue virus in India has evolved dramatically, researchers at the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru have revealed. The new details were revealed as part of a computational analysis of the virus over six decades.
The multi-institutional study found that the cases of mosquito-borne viral disease have steadily increased in the last 50 years, predominantly in South-East Asian counties. The team looked at the four serotypes of the dengue virus and examined how much each of these serotypes deviated from their ancestral sequence.
The findings published in the journal plos pathagens state that dengue propagates and adapts to the selection pressures imposed by a multitude of factors that can lead to the emergence of new variants
What is Dengue?
The dengue virus belongs to the family Flaviviridae and has four serotypes: DEN-1, DEN-2, DEN-3, and DEN-4. The virus is transmitted to humans by the Aedes mosquito, which becomes infected by biting an infected person.
