Abstract
South Texas has experienced local transmission of Zika virus and of other mosquito-borne viruses such as chikungunya virus and dengue virus in the last decades. Using a mosquito surveillance program in the Lower Rio Grande Valley (LRGV) and San Antonio, TX, from 2016 to 2018, we detected the presence of an insect-specific virus, cell fusing agent virus (CFAV), in the Aedes aegypti mosquito population. We tested 6,326 females and 1,249 males from the LRGV and 659 females from San Antonio for CFAV by RT-PCR using specific primers. Infection rates varied from 0 to 261 per 1,000 mosquitoes in the LRGV and 115 to 208 per 1,000 in San Antonio depending on the month of collection. Infection rates per 1,000 individuals appeared higher in females collected from BG Sentinel 2 traps compared to Autocidal Gravid Ovitraps, but the ratio of the percentage of infected pools did not differ by trap type. The natural viral load in individual males ranged from 1.25 x 102 to 5.50 x 106 RNA copies and in unfed females from 5.42 x 103 to 8.70 x 106 RNA copies. Gravid females were found to harbor fewer viral particles than males and unfed females.
Highlights
In the continental United States, the states of Florida and Texas are emerging hotspots for Aedes aegypti-driven virus transmission
cell fusing agent virus (CFAV) was discovered more than 40 years ago in an infected Ae. aegypti cell culture, its first detection in mosquito pools was in Puerto Rico in 2006 [13]
Our study reveals the presence of CFAV throughout the year in Ae. aegypti collected using Autocidal Gravid Ovitraps (AGO) traps in the Lower Rio Grande Valley (LRGV) and at least from May to July for the San Antonio population collected using BG Sentinel 2 traps (BGS2) traps
Summary
In the continental United States, the states of Florida and Texas are emerging hotspots for Aedes aegypti-driven virus transmission. The Texas-Mexico border region has experienced local epidemics of dengue virus (DENV) in multiple communities [1,2,3,4]. DENV transmission in Tamaulipas, Mexico, during an epidemic period can amount to thousands of cases, while on the other side of the border in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, United States, very few cases are recorded [4]. ISVs can only infect and replicate in insect cells, causing no disease in humans [12]. Since its isolation from a natural mosquito population in Puerto Rico, United States [13], CFAV has been reported in multiple other countries, including Thailand [14], Indonesia [15], and Mexico [16].
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