a brief view on molecular diagnosis and surveillance of west nile virus

west nile virus (wnv) is an important zoo-notic agent having a wide host range. due to its emergence with increased virulence in a wide geographical range, its monitoring becomes im-perative. development of more rapid and sensitive molecular techniques for instance reverse trans-criptase-polymerase chain reaction (rt-pcr), reverse transcription loop-mediated isothermal amplification (rt-lamp) and nucleic acid se-quence based amplification (nasba) assays are vital for detection of the virus. various surveil-lance techniques according to epidemiological, climatic and geographical conditions in the ex-posed area have also been developed. the surveil-lance can be set up at different levels of the wnv transmission cycle using birds, horses and mos-quitoes as sentinels.