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Review
. 2011 Jun 13;9(7):532-41.
doi: 10.1038/nrmicro2595.

Fever from the forest: prospects for the continued emergence of sylvatic dengue virus and its impact on public health

Nikos Vasilakis  1 , Jane Cardosa, Kathryn A Hanley, Edward C Holmes, Scott C Weaver
Affiliations
Review

Fever from the forest: prospects for the continued emergence of sylvatic dengue virus and its impact on public health

Nikos Vasilakis et al. Nat Rev Microbiol. .

Abstract

The four dengue virus (DENV) serotypes that circulate among humans emerged independently from ancestral sylvatic progenitors that were present in non-human primates, following the establishment of human populations that were large and dense enough to support continuous inter-human transmission by mosquitoes. This ancestral sylvatic-DENV transmission cycle still exists and is maintained in non-human primates and Aedes mosquitoes in the forests of Southeast Asia and West Africa. Here, we provide an overview of the ecology and molecular evolution of sylvatic DENV and its potential for adaptation to human transmission. We also emphasize how the study of sylvatic DENV will improve our ability to understand, predict and, ideally, avert further DENV emergence.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. The transmission cycles of dengue virus
The sylvatic origins of dengue virus, and the ‘zone of emergence’, where sylvatic cycles contact human populations in rural areas of West Africa and Southeast Asia. In addition, dengue virus can persist in mosquito populations by transovarial transmission (TOT), in which virus-infected mosquitoes transfer the virus to their eggs (this has been shown to occur in some species but not in all).
Figure 2
Figure 2. The geography of sylvatic dengue virus
The geographic range of known and putative mosquito vectors and non-human primate hosts for the transmission cycles of sylvatic dengue virus in Africa and Southeast Asia. Although the range of the guinea baboon (Papio papio) is limited to West Africa, closely related species such as Papio anubis, Papio ursinus and Papio cynocephalus are found across the continent and could also be involved in dengue virus transmission.
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