Epidemiology, Clinical Manifestations, Treatment Approaches and Future Perspectives of Rift Valley Fever

Abstract

Rift Valley fever (RVF) is a mosquito borne viral disease that had been firstly revealed in Kenya in 1930. It has now become an endemic in all over multiple African states as well as in Arabian Peninsula. In the early days, RVF was assumed to be geologically restricted to only sub-Saharan Africa, thus, RVF generally had not been considered in the diagnosis of disease epidemics outside of the Africa. The loss of livestock had furthermore threatened the livelihood of people who were dependent on the animals for their food and income. Weakness, chills, headache, fever are considered to be the most common symptoms that arise in the patients suffering from RVF. Nevertheless, the choices for control of the RVF outbreaks have been restricted by the lack of approved human vaccines or other medications. Ribavirin, Favipiravir and various other anti-viral drugs had shown to be effective against the rift valley fever. However, only supportive care had been used for the treatment of the RVF. For that purpose, Rift Valley Fever had now been prioritized by the World Health Organization (WHO) for urgent research and development of countermeasures for the control and prevention of future outbreak. In this review, we had highlighted the outbreak of Rift Valley Fever in various countries, its epidemiology, clinical manifestations, various medications that had been used for the treatment of this infectious disease and also the future prospectives regarding the RVF based on up-to-date data extracted from reputed journals and official websites.