Comparative Susceptibility of Aedes albopictus and Aedes aegypti to Dengue Virus Infection After Feeding on Blood of Viremic Humans:

(See the editorial commentary by Christofferson on pages 1177–9.) Aedes albopictus is secondary to Aedes aegypti as a vector of dengue viruses (DENVs) in settings of endemicity, but it plays an important role in areas of dengue emergence. This study compared the susceptibility of these 2 species to DENV infection by performing 232 direct blood-feeding experiments on 118 viremic patients with dengue in Vietnam. Field-derived A. albopictus acquired DENV infections as readily as A. aegypti after blood feeding. Once infected, A. albopictus permitted higher concentrations of DENV RNA to accumulate in abdom-inal tissues, compared with A. aegypti. However, the odds of A. albopictus having infectious saliva were lower than the odds observed for A. aegypti (odds ratio, 0.70; 95 % confidence interval,.52–.93). These results quan-titate the susceptibility of A. albopictus to DENV infection and will assist parameterization of models for pre-dicting disease risk in settings where A. albopictus is present. Keywords. Dengue; Aedes aegypti; Aedes albopictus; susceptibility; transmission. Dengue is the most important arboviral infection of hu-mans, with an estimated 00 million clinically apparent in-fections annually [1, 2]. In dengue-endemic countries, Aedes aegypti (Linnaeus) is widely accepted to be the primary vectors of dengue viruses (DENVs), with Aedes albopictus (Skuse) regarded as a secondary vector. Yet A. albopictus can clearly transmit DENV at scales that are im-portant to public health. For example, outbreaks of dengu