Why dengue and yellow fever coexist in some areas of the world and not in others?

Abstract

Urban yellow fever and dengue coexist in Africa but not in Asia and South America. In this paper, we examine four hypotheses (and various combinations thereof) to explain the absence of yellow fever in urban areas of Asia and South America. In addition, we examine an additional hypothesis that offers an explanation of the coexistence of the infections in Africa while at the same time explaining their lack of coexistence in Asia. The hypotheses we tested to explain the nonexistence of yellow fever in Asia are the following: (1) the Asian Aedes aegypti is relatively incompetent to transmit yellow fever; (2) there would exist a competition between dengue and yellow fever viruses within the mosquitoes, as suggested by in vitro studies in which the dengue virus always wins; (3) when an A. aegypti mosquito that is infected by or latent for yellow fever acquires dengue, it becomes latent for dengue due to internal competition within the mosquito between the two viruses; (4) there is an important cross-immunity between yellow fever and other flaviviruses, dengue in particular, such that a person recovered from a bout of dengue exhibits a diminished susceptibility to yellow fever. This latter hypothesis is referred to below as the “Asian hypothesis.” Finally, we hypothesize that: (5) the coexistence of the infections in Africa is due to the low prevalence of the mosquito Aedes albopictus in Africa, as it competes with A. aegypti. We will refer to this latter hypothesis as the “African hypothesis.” We construct a model of transmission that allows all of the above hypotheses to be tested. We conclude that the Asian and the African hypotheses can explain the observed phenomena, whereas other hypotheses fail to do so.