Molecular Epidemiology of Japanese Encephalitis Virus in Mosquitoes during an Outbreak in China, 2013

Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV) can cause serious encephalitis and Culex mosquitoes are the primary vector. In 2013, a JE outbreak occurred in Shandong Province, China with 407 confirmed cases, including 11 deaths. An investigation on JEV in mosquitoes during the outbreak was conducted. A total of 14,719 mosquitoes were collected at 3 sites. For the 12,695 Culex tritaeniorhynchus mosquitoes, 88/201 pooled samples were positive by RT-PCR for the presence of the pre-membrane or envelope protein coding genes. The maximum likelihood estimates of JEV positive individuals per 1,000 vectors were 12.0, 7.2, and 6.0 in the 3 sites respectively with an overall estimate of 9.1. Phylogenetic analysis on these pre-membrane (n = 72) and envelope (n = 26) sequences with those of reference strains revealed they belonged to genotype I. This study describes the molecular epidemiology of JEV and suggests the high infection rate in mosquitoes is an important factor for the outbreak.