Lessons learned on Zika virus vectors

• Published in: PLoS neglected tropical diseases 2017-06, Vol.11 (6), p.e0005511-e0005511
• Main Authors: Lourenço-de-Oliveira, Ricardo, Failloux, Anna-Bella
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Aedes - physiology; Aedes - virology; Animals; Aquatic insects; Biology and life sciences; Chikungunya virus; Culex pipiens; Culex quinquefasciatus; Disease Outbreaks; Distribution; Epidemics; Flavivirus; Inoculation; Life Sciences; Medical research; Medicine and Health Sciences; Microbiology and Parasitology; Mosquito Vectors - virology; Mosquitoes; Population density; Preventive medicine; Studies; Tropical diseases; Vector-borne diseases; Vectors; Viewpoints; Virology; Virus-vector relationships; Viruses; Zika virus; Zika Virus - physiology
• ISSN: 1935-2735; 1935-2727; 1935-2735
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pntd.0005511

The most recent examples of disasters caused by mosquito-borne arboviruses are the 2015-2016 re-emergences of urban yellow fever (YF) in Angola, which reached the Democratic Republic of Congo, with viremic people dispersing to densely populated regions in Asia, such as China [1], and the global emergence and spread of chikungunya and Zika viruses in the Pacific region and the Americas [2,3]. Since vaccines are unavailable or inadequately supplied and drugs are inefficient in the treatment of arbovirus infections, prevention and control of such infections must rely on the fight against the insect vectors of the viruses. [...]18 populations from all 5 continents were independently tested in 10 laboratories across the world [5-14] (S1 Table). Briefly, 8 Culex pipiens and 10 Cx. quinquefasciatus populations have proved to be incompetent to transmit 10 isolates of the circulating Asian genotype of ZIKV and 2 of the African genotype, including the prototype of ZIKV, even when challenged with high viral loads fed either directly on viremic animals or on artificial meals and incubated under various conditions (see S1 Table). Notably, infectious ZIKV particles have never been detected in saliva expectorated by Cx. pipiens or Cx. quinquefasciatus mosquitoes either orally exposed or intrathoracically inoculated with ZIKV [5, 7-14]. [...]Culex mosquitoes essentially do not even meet the basic requirements that allow a potential transmission, i.e., the persistence of infection followed by viral dissemination to secondary tissues outside the midgut [5, 7-9, 11-13]. In reality, Culex mosquitoes infrequently become infected, or at most, they are minimally infected,...