BACKGROUND Dengue fever, an endemic arboviral disease, represents one of the major public health concerns in Nepal. It is transmitted by bites of infected Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus, the former being primary vector. The bacterial community plays a significant role in biology of mosquitoes; however, the bacterial communities of primary vector A. aegypti remain unstudied in Nepal. The stu...

There is growing awareness on the effects of insecticides used for controlling the vectors spreading human diseases. Manipulating or introducing of a self reproducing predator into the ecosystem may present continual biological control of vector populations. In order to achieve an acceptable control of the primary Aedes aegypti (Linnaeus) and secondary Aedes albopictus (Skuse) mosquitoes (Dipte...

Dengue fever (DF) and dengue haemorrhagic fever are vector-borne diseases of public health importance in tropical, subtropical and temperate regions of the world (Gubler 1998). It is a popular belief that Aedes aegypti (Linnaeus) is the sole vector of the four distinct serotypes of dengue virus that causes the spectrum of disease symptoms collectively known as “dengue” (including DF, dengue hae...

After a decade of outbreaks in Africa, the Indian Ocean and Asia, chikungunya virus (CHIKV) is stepping out of the shadow of dengue virus [1]. Although these two mosquito-borne viruses share clinical characteristics and their main vectors, Aedes albopictus (the tiger mosquito) and Ae. aegypti, CHIKV has long remained exotic to the western hemisphere [2]. The emergence of the Indian Ocean lineag...

BACKGROUND No vaccine is currently available for dengue virus (DENV), therefore control programmes usually focus on managing mosquito vector populations. Entomological surveys provide the most common means of characterising vector populations and predicting the risk of local dengue virus transmission. Despite Indonesia being a country strongly affected by DENV, only limited information is avail...

Dengue virus type 3 genotype I was detected in Brazil during epidemics in 2002-2004. To confirm this finding, we identified this virus genotype in naturally infected field-caught Aedes aegypti mosquitoes and eggs. Results showed usefulness of virus investigations in vectors as a component of active epidemiologic surveillance.

Software for pattern recognition of the larvae of mosquitoes Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus, biological vectors of dengue and yellow fever, has been developed. Rapid field identification of larva using a digital camera linked to a laptop computer equipped with this software may greatly help prevention campaigns.

Two basic strategies have been proposed for using transgenic Aedes aegypti mosquitoes to decrease dengue virus transmission: population reduction and population replacement. Here we model releases of a strain of Ae. aegypti carrying both a gene causing conditional adult female mortality and a gene blocking virus transmission into a wild population to assess whether such releases could reduce th...

After 8 years of silence, dengue virus serotype 2 (DENV-2) reemerged in southeastern Senegal in 1999. Sixty-four DENV-2 strains were isolated in 1999 and 9 strains in 2000 from mosquitoes captured in the forest gallery and surrounding villages. Isolates were obtained from previously described vectors, Aedes furcifer, Ae. taylori, Ae. luteocephalus, and--for the first time in Senegal--from Ae. a...