Gert van der Hoek
In Memoriam - Editor, Senior Moderator
Tuesday 12th July, 2016
Bengaluru/New Delhi, July 12 (IANS) Researchers in New Delhi have found that "Aedes aegypti" mosquitoes that transmit the chikungunya virus, pass it on to their offspring -- a feature that allows these mosquitoes to maintain the virus within their population for generations.
In other words, mosquitoes emerging from eggs laid by infected Aedes also carry the virus, thus enabling the virus to keep circulating in nature.
A team from the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), National Institute of Malaria Research and the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has reported this finding in the reputed journal 'Acta Tropica.'
"Called transovarian transmission (TOT) or vertical transmission, this is an important feature by which viruses survive in nature until they reach a population large enough to infect human population," Sujatha Sunil, head of Vector Bourne Diseases Group at ICGEB and principal investigator of the study, told IANS.
In India, chikungunya re-emerged in 2006, after a gap of 32 years and since then it has been occurring either as single infection outbreaks or as co-infections with dengue in different parts of India.
TOT, in which a virus spreads from mosquito to mosquito, is known to occur in the case of yellow fever virus which is also transmitted by A. aegypti mosquitoes.
"However, there have been no reports on TOT of chikungunya virus in field samples till date," Sujatha said. "The present pilot entomological survey is the first study to confirm this feature in natural population of Aedes mosquitoes."
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Bengaluru/New Delhi, July 12 (IANS) Researchers in New Delhi have found that "Aedes aegypti" mosquitoes that transmit the chikungunya virus, pass it on to their offspring -- a feature that allows these mosquitoes to maintain the virus within their population for generations.
In other words, mosquitoes emerging from eggs laid by infected Aedes also carry the virus, thus enabling the virus to keep circulating in nature.
A team from the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), National Institute of Malaria Research and the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has reported this finding in the reputed journal 'Acta Tropica.'
"Called transovarian transmission (TOT) or vertical transmission, this is an important feature by which viruses survive in nature until they reach a population large enough to infect human population," Sujatha Sunil, head of Vector Bourne Diseases Group at ICGEB and principal investigator of the study, told IANS.
In India, chikungunya re-emerged in 2006, after a gap of 32 years and since then it has been occurring either as single infection outbreaks or as co-infections with dengue in different parts of India.
TOT, in which a virus spreads from mosquito to mosquito, is known to occur in the case of yellow fever virus which is also transmitted by A. aegypti mosquitoes.
"However, there have been no reports on TOT of chikungunya virus in field samples till date," Sujatha said. "The present pilot entomological survey is the first study to confirm this feature in natural population of Aedes mosquitoes."
READ MORE