Surveillance of Yellow Fever virus in mosquitoes from North of Argentina

ESTEFANIA BOAGLIO; JORGE GARCIA; JORGE KURUCK; BELEN NATALINI; MARTIN KOWALEWSKI; SILVINA GOENAGA

Manaos

Congreso; Latin American Society For Vector Ecology- LASOVE; 2019

Latin American Society for Vector Ecology (LASOVE)

The Arbovirus (ArBoViruses = arthropod-transmitted viruses) represents an ecological based grouping on vector transmission by arthropods. Arboviruses are biologically transmitted between vertebrates (hosts) and hematophagous arthropods (vector) such as mosquitoes, simulids, sandflies and ticks. Arboviruses have great impact on public health, because causing sporadic and epidemic outbreaks that affect to human and animal populations. Yellow fever virus is a member of Flavivirus genre, which affects about 200,000 people each year and 30,000 people die each year in unvaccinated populations.During 2016- 2018 an outbreak of Yellow Fever Virus (YFV) affect Brasil, conferring an alert in the North of Argentina. In this sense we mosquito captures in the northeast part of Corrientes province during April of 2019, in the framework of YFV surveillance in areas where black and gold howler monkey (Alouatta caraya) populations were present and where there were reported epizootics from 2009. The objective of the present study was to investigate the circulation of YFV in mosquitoes that could be implicated in the selvatic transmission of YFV in Argentina.Mosquitoes were captured, manually using entomologic nets at ground level. Insects collected in the field were placed in labeled vials, frozen in liquid nitrogen and shipped to the Instituto Nacional de Enfermedades Virales Humanas (INEVH-ANLIS) laboratory. At the laboratory, the specimens were sorted under a stereoscopic microscope on a chilled table by species, location and date of collection. Pools of mosquitoes were performed with the same species, same site and date of captured.Pooles of mosquitoes were macerated in order to obtain a mosquito homogenate suspension and RNA extraction was performed with Trizol technique (TRI REAGENT TM), following by polymerase chain reaction technique nested after retrotranscription (RT-Nested-PCR) with the use specific primers for YFV and generics for Flavivirus and Alphavirus.A total of 456 specimens of mosquitoes (58 pools) were analyzed. We captured 456 individual mosquitoes (58 pooles) belonging to Haemagogus, Sabethes, Psorophora, Ochlerotatus and Mansonia genera. The species most abundant was Psorophora ferox (38%). Regarding to YFV vector species, Sabethes albiprivus (2.2%) and Haemagogus leucocelaenus (1.5%) were found but in lower proportion.The result of virological analysis was negative for YFV. However, a strain of Insect flavivirus specific was detected in Psorophora, but it requires more analysis in order to determine which flavivirus belonged. It is very important to continue with entomo-virological surveillance studies to detect circulation early of Arboviruses and to recognize new viral agents that could be circulating in the region