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. 2017 Mar 28:6:e22069.
doi: 10.7554/eLife.22069.

Tracking zoonotic pathogens using blood-sucking flies as 'flying syringes'

Paul-Yannick Bitome-Essono  1   2   3 , Benjamin Ollomo  2 , Céline Arnathau  4 , Patrick Durand  4 , Nancy Diamella Mokoudoum  2 , Lauriane Yacka-Mouele  2 , Alain-Prince Okouga  2 , Larson Boundenga  2 , Bertrand Mve-Ondo  2 , Judicaël Obame-Nkoghe  2 , Philippe Mbehang-Nguema  2   3 , Flobert Njiokou  5 , Boris Makanga  2   3 , Rémi Wattier  1 , Diego Ayala  2   4 , Francisco J Ayala  6 , Francois Renaud  4 , Virginie Rougeron  2   4 , Francois Bretagnolle  1 , Franck Prugnolle  2   4 , Christophe Paupy  2   4
Affiliations

Tracking zoonotic pathogens using blood-sucking flies as 'flying syringes'

Paul-Yannick Bitome-Essono et al. Elife. .

Abstract

About 60% of emerging infectious diseases in humans are of zoonotic origin. Their increasing number requires the development of new methods for early detection and monitoring of infectious agents in wildlife. Here, we investigated whether blood meals from hematophagous flies could be used to identify the infectious agents circulating in wild vertebrates. To this aim, 1230 blood-engorged flies were caught in the forests of Gabon. Identified blood meals (30%) were from 20 vertebrate species including mammals, birds and reptiles. Among them, 9% were infected by different extant malaria parasites among which some belonged to known parasite species, others to new parasite species or to parasite lineages for which only the vector was known. This study demonstrates that using hematophagous flies as 'flying syringes' constitutes an interesting approach to investigate blood-borne pathogen diversity in wild vertebrates and could be used as an early detection tool of zoonotic pathogens.

Keywords: Plasmodium parasites; ecology; epidemiology; global health; hematophagous flies; tsetse flies.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.. Monitoring vertebrate haemosporidian diversity using haematophagous flies.
(a) Localization of the sampling sites (red dots) in Gabon (Central Africa). (b) Number of blood meals originating from the different vertebrate species. (c) Position within the Cytb phylogeny of the haemosporidian Cytb sequences PCR-amplified from the blood meals of engorged flies with identified hosts (red isolates) and unidentified hosts (green isolates). Black isolates: references (Table 4). Bootstrap values at important nodes are shown. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.22069.003
Figure 2.
Figure 2.. Number of blood meals identified using the shorter PCR system of Boessenkool et al. (2012) out of the previously unidentified 89 blood meals.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.22069.007
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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