Background

The infectious dose required to infect mosquito vectors when they take a blood meal from a viremic person is a critical parameter underlying the probability of dengue virus (DENV) transmission. Because experimental vector competence studies typically examine the proportion of mosquitoes that become infected at intermediate or high DENV infectious doses in the blood meal, the minimum blood meal titer required to infect mosquitoes is poorly documented. Understanding the factors influencing the lower infectiousness threshold is epidemiologically significant because it determines the transmission potential of humans with a low DENV viremia, possibly including inapparent infections, and during the onset and resolution of the viremic period of acutely infected individuals.

Methodology/principal findings

We compared the susceptibility of two field-derived Aedes aegypti populations from Kamphaeng Phet, Thailand when they were orally exposed to low titers of six DENV-2 isolates derived from the serum of naturally infected humans living in the same region. The infectious dose, time-point post-blood feeding, viral isolate and mosquito population, were significant predictors of the proportion of mosquitoes that became infected. Importantly, the dose-response profile differed significantly between the two Ae. aegypti populations. Although both mosquito populations had a similar 50% oral infectious dose (OID50), the slope of the dose-response was shallower in one population, resulting in a markedly higher susceptibility at low blood meal titers.

Conclusions/significance

Our results indicate that mosquitoes in nature vary in their infectious dose-response to DENV. Thus, different mosquito populations have a differential ability to acquire DENV infection at low viremia levels. Future studies on human-to-mosquito DENV transmission should not be limited to OID50 values, but rather they should be expanded to account for the shape of the dose-response profile across a range of virus titers.

Despite their epidemiological importance, the evolutionary forces that shape the spatial structure of dengue virus genetic diversity are not fully understood. Fine-scale genetic structure of mosquito vector populations and evidence for genotype × genotype interactions between dengue viruses and their mosquito vectors are consistent with the hypothesis that the geographical distribution of dengue virus genetic diversity may reflect viral adaptation to local mosquito populations. To test this hypothesis, we measured vector competence in all sympatric and allopatric combinations of 14 low-passage dengue virus isolates and two wild-type populations of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes sampled in Bangkok and Kamphaeng Phet, two sites located about 300 km apart in Thailand. Despite significant genotype × genotype interactions, we found no evidence for superior vector competence in sympatric versus allopatric vector-virus combinations. Viral phylogenetic analysis revealed no geographical clustering of the 14 isolates, suggesting that high levels of viral migration (gene flow) in Thailand may counteract spatially heterogeneous natural selection. We conclude that it is unlikely that vector-mediated selection is a major driver of dengue virus adaptive evolution at the regional scale that we examined. Dengue virus local adaptation to mosquito vector populations could happen, however, in places or times that we did not test, or at a different geographical scale.