When a Bacterium fights Dengue Virus
"Quando uma bactéria ataca o vÃrus da dengue"
Luciano A. Moreira
Centro de Pesquisas René Rachou, FIOCRUZ-MG* / IOC-RJ, Brazil
Vector-borne diseases such as dengue, malaria and other arboviruses impose serious burden towards public health in tropical regions of the world. Current control methods mainly rely on insecticides for mosquito control and because of that, resistance against commonly used chemicals is increasingly widespread. Our project involves the use of a naturally occurring bacterium called Wolbachia as a novel biological control agent (www.eliminatedengue.org/riodejaneiro) Wolbachia manipulates the reproduction of their host in order to be vertically transmitted from the mother to offspring. This bacterium is believed to be present in up to 70% of all insect species worldwide but it has never been found in Aedes aegypti, the main vector for dengue. When stably introduced into A. aegypti, Wolbachia was able to block dengue virus transmission and significantly reduced Chikungunya virus and Plasmodium gallinaceum load in these mosquitoes. Currently, field tests are been carried out in Australia, Indonesia and Vietnam (as part of the Eliminate Dengue Program), where Wolbachia-containing mosquitoes were able to invade local populations of A. aegypti. The idea is to replace the virus-susceptible population of mosquitoes with another population with the bacterium – and therefore, resistant to the virus. Since 2012 we have been working to implement this project in Brazil, involving the introgression of Wolbachia into Brazilian A. aegypti background, field entomology activities to study mosquito abundance and population structure as well as community engagement activities. Here we will discuss several aspects towards the implementation of the Eliminate Dengue Project in Brazil, showing recent results in different areas of the innovative project. This strategy has the potential to significantly reduce the burden of dengue in Brazil and in other endemic countries and is perfectly complementary to current control methods, including vaccines.
Eliminate Dengue Brasil is funded in part by the Ministry of Health in Brazil (SCTIEs/ SVS/ CNPq) and by a grant from the
Foundation of the National Institutes of Health through the Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.