Preface

Organisms/animals that transmit diseases are called vectors. They cause serious health problems to the human population such as illness and death. Famous vectors that cause diseases include fleas, ticks, mites, and mosquitos. Mostly, the vectors are invertebrate arthropods and non-living fomites. A disease that can be transmitted from an arthropod or a fomite to a human or animal or plant is called a vector-borne disease (VBDs). Vectors are able to carry and transmit various infectious organisms such as parasites, bacteria and viruses. Vector-borne diseases in a given country affect the socio-economic status and have a huge impact on the Global disease burden.

Ironically, despite decades of research on VBDs, still much remains to be discovered on the complicated relationships between vector, host, and pathogen in their internal environment. The emergence of new diseases such as Zika possess more questions on the complicity of host-pathogen-vector interaction. Any effective vaccine/intervention/ depends on the complete information on the molecules that perform interaction between host-pathogen-vector. Hence, a complete understanding is very much essential. Vector-borne diseases are a threat to the community worldwide. Each year 2.5 billion people in over 100 countries (WHO reports) die of such diseases. Brain inflammation, coma, cerebral leakage, meningitis, neuronal and glial cell degeneration, endothelial dysfunction, blood-brain barrier leakage, and disturbance in Cerebro Spinal Fluid (CSF) circulation have all been noted in various vector-borne diseases such as dengue, Chikungunya, Malaria, West Nile fever, Filariasis and Japanese encephalitis (JE) . I wish our readers can be satisfied with many questions which they feel excited to find the answer for research questions on the etiology of neurological sequale of vector-borne diseases in this book.