Detection, isolation, and characterization of chikungunya viruses associated with the Pakistan outbreak of 2016-2017.

The chikungunya virus (CHIKV) is a mosquito-transmitted alphavirus, which has infected millions of people in Africa, Asia, Americas, and Europe since it reemerged in India and Indian Ocean regions in 2005-2006. Starting in the middle of November 2016, CHIKV has been widely spread, and more than 4,000 cases of infections in humans were confirmed in Pakistan. Here, we report the first isolation and characterization of CHIKV from the Pakistan outbreak.

Extensive evolution analysis of the global chikungunya virus strains revealed the origination of CHIKV epidemics in Pakistan in 2016.

Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) is a mosquito-borne virus that causes epidemics widely in the world especially in the tropical and subtropical regions. Phylogenetic analysis has found that the CHIKV lineages were associated with the spatial and temporal distributions, which were related to the virus adaption to the major mosquito species and their distributions. In this study, we reported the complete genome sequences of eight CHIKV isolates from the outbreak in Pakistan last year.