Co-Infection of Mosquitoes with Chikungunya and Dengue Viruses Reveals Modulation of the Replication of Both Viruses in Midguts and Salivary Glands of Aedes aegypti Mosquitoes.

Alain Le Coupanec (1) , Stéphane Tchankouo-Nguetcheu (1) , Pascal Roux (2) , Huot Khun (3) , Michel Huerre (3) , Ronald Morales-Vargas (4) , Margot Enguehard (5) , Dimitri Lavillette (5) , Dorothée Missé (6) , Valérie Choumet (7)

1 Génétique Moléculaire des Bunyavirus
2 CITECH - Imagopole
3 Histotechnologie et Pathologie
4 Mahidol University [Bangkok]
5 IPS-CAS - Institut Pasteur de Shanghai, Académie des Sciences de Chine - Chinese Academy of Sciences
6 MIVEGEC - Maladies infectieuses et vecteurs : écologie, génétique, évolution et contrôle
7 ERI - Environnement et Risques infectieux - Environment and Infectious Risks

Arthropod-borne virus (arbovirus) infections cause several emerging and resurgent infectious diseases in humans and animals. Chikungunya-affected areas often overlap with dengue-endemic areas. Concurrent dengue virus (DENV) and chikungunya virus (CHIKV) infections have been detected in travelers returning from regions of endemicity. CHIKV and DENV co-infected Aedes albopictus have also been collected in the vicinity of co-infected human cases, emphasizing the need to study co-infections in mosquitoes. We thus aimed to study the pathogen-pathogen interaction involved in these co-infections in DENV/CHIKV co-infected Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. In mono-infections, we detected CHIKV antigens as early as 4 days post-virus exposure in both the midgut (MG) and salivary gland (SG), whereas we detected DENV serotype 2 (DENV-2) antigens from day 5 post-virus exposure in MG and day 10 post-virus exposure in SG. Identical infection rates were observed for singly and co-infected mosquitoes, and facilitation of the replication of both viruses at various times post-viral exposure. We observed a higher replication for DENV-2 in SG of co-infected mosquitoes. We showed that mixed CHIKV and DENV infection facilitated viral replication in Ae. aegypti. The outcome of these mixed infections must be further studied to increase our understanding of pathogen-pathogen interactions in host cells.

Mots clés: Aedes aegypti; arbovirus; chikungunya; co-infection; dengue

Domaines: Sciences du Vivant [q-bio]; Microbiologie et Parasitologie; Virologie

Alain Le Coupanec, Stéphane Tchankouo-Nguetcheu, Pascal Roux, Huot Khun, Michel Huerre, et al.. Co-Infection of Mosquitoes with Chikungunya and Dengue Viruses Reveals Modulation of the Replication of Both Viruses in Midguts and Salivary Glands of Aedes aegypti Mosquitoes.. International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 2017, Molecular Research of Emerging Viruses: Viral Evolution, Diagnostics and Pathogenesis and Therapeutics, 18 (8), pp.1708. ⟨10.3390/ijms18081708⟩. ⟨pasteur-01576236⟩