Japanese Encephalitis

Japanese encephalitis (JE) is a mosquito-borne flavivirus encephalitis, which is one of the common encephalitides found in clinical practice in South Asian countries. First outbreak of JE encephalitis was reported from Japan in 1871, followed by a severe epidemic again in 1924. The JE virus (JEV) is a single-stranded RNA virus belonging to the family Flaviviridae and the genus Flavivirus. JE virus exists in an enzootic life cycle between mosquitoes and pigs. It commonly affects children, but frequently adult cases have also been encountered. About one-third of the patients die of this disease, one-third live with severe neurological sequelae, and remaining one-third survive with mild or no sequelae