Nevertheless, the viral titers associated with these detections were often not compatible with transmission competence. albopictus mosquitoes, ZIKV has been detected in salivary gland pools of all of these mosquito species caught in urban settings in Mexico 20. Most ZIKV-infected mosquito species (25) have been caught in sylvatic settings, whereas only six species have been reported to be infected with ZIKV in urban settings: Ae.

This distribution suggests the Aedes genus as the most important mosquito taxon involved in ZIKV transmission. Among the Aedes mosquitoes, Stegomyia is the major subgenus from which ZIKV has been isolated (9 species). These mosquitoes belong to five genera: Aedes (22 species), Culex (4 species), Anopheles and Eretmapodites (2 species each) and Mansonia (1 species) (Fig. Our literature search conducted in April 2018 reported 31 wild-caught mosquito species infected with ZIKV worldwide (Supplementary Table 1). Millions of ZIKV cases have now been reported from 86 countries, including the expanded forms of congenital infection that comprise congenital Zika syndrome (CZS) and Guillain Barré syndrome 10. This was followed by a spread throughout the South Pacific and eventually to the Americas, where a massive epidemic ensued and congenital microcephaly was first associated with maternal ZIKV infection 2 (Fig. In 2013, a major outbreak started in French Polynesia involving approximately 100,000 infected persons, providing the first evidence of a severe disease, Guillain Barré syndrome, associated with ZIKV infection 9. The first ZIKV outbreaks were documented in Gabon 6 and Yap 7, 8 in 2007. However, between 19, there was no direct evidence of ZIKV transmission by this species, which may reflect limited urban transmission or simply a lack of surveillance and diagnostics to detect endemic or epidemic circulation. The first evidence of possible interhuman urban transmission came from Malaysia in 1966, when ZIKV was detected in the domesticated, anthropophilic mosquito, Aedes (Stegomyia) aegypti aegypti. 5) confirmed its widespread distribution for many decades. Nevertheless, direct detection of ZIKV in countries including Senegal, the Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, the Central African Republic, Uganda, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines (reviewed in ref. However, many of the serologic tests employed in this surveillance are cross-reactive among flaviviruses, thus these results must be interpreted with caution. 4) and in 7 Asian countries or territories from 1952 to 1997 (Fig. Surveillance efforts identified immune people in at least 25 African countries from 1945 to 2014 (reviewed in ref. The virus was first isolated from a sentinel rhesus macaque and from Aedes (Stegomyia) a fricanus mosquitoes in the same Ugandan location. Finally, we identify critical remaining gaps in the current knowledge of ZIKV vector-borne transmission. We also provide an evidence-supported analysis regarding the possibility of ZIKV spillback from an urban cycle to a zoonotic cycle outside Africa, and we review hypotheses regarding recent emergence and evolution of ZIKV. Here, we review the mosquito and vertebrate host species potentially involved in ZIKV vector-borne transmission worldwide.

Despite a growing number of ZIKV studies in the past three years, many aspects of the virus remain poorly characterized, particularly the spectrum of species involved in its transmission cycles. Therefore, little attention was given to this virus before epidemics in the South Pacific and the Americas that began in 2013. From its discovery until 2007, only sporadic ZIKV cases were reported, with mild clinical manifestations in patients. Zika virus (ZIKV), discovered in the Zika Forest of Uganda in 1947, is a mosquito-borne flavivirus related to yellow fever, dengue and West Nile viruses.

Examples of vector borne transmission