The Italian outbreak of CHIKV spread through communities surrounding the city of Ravenna during August to October 2007 and also involved the major Italian city of Bologna [15, 16] . A recorded 254 people were identified to be infected through the Ae. albopictus mosquito which has inhabited the Emilia Romagna region since 1990 [14, 17, 18] . The virus brought to the Emilia Romagna region by a traveler returning from a CHIKV affected country was of the Central/East African genotype and matched most closely (100% amino acid identity) with the IND-06 virus isolated from the Reunion Island outbreak [14, 17] . The amino acid identity confirmed that this virus included a substitution mutation in the E1 envelope protein (E1-A226V) [19] which is important for viral entry into host cells. This mutation was acquired during the 2005-2006 Indian Ocean CHIKV outbreak and increased the virus's infectivity to the Ae. albopictus mosquito [20] .