Endemic and Emerging Arboviruses of Mosquitoes in Ecuador

Abstract

Arboviruses are arthropod-borne viruses that include many viruses of public health concern found in Ecuador. Dengue virus, yellow fever virus and Zika virus are in the Flaviridae family (1), while chikungunya virus and Mayaro virus are in the Togaviridae family (1). Yellow fever has circulated throughout the tropics since at least the17th century, with the first recorded outbreak in Latin America in 1647 (2), with the virus being identified in 1927 (3). Dengue virus is also a long-time source of global outbreaks and was identified in 1943 (4). Dengue has four virus serotypes (DENV 1-4), allowing for repeated infection of individuals. Chikungunya, Zika and Mayaro were identified as causes of febrile disease more recently: the Zika virus was isolated from a monkey in 1947 in Uganda (5), chikungunya virus during an outbreak in south-eastern Africa in 1952 (1), and Mayaro virus from a patient in Trinidad in 1954 (6). Chikungunya has four genotypes: East/Central/South African, Western African, Indian Ocean and Asian (1), while Zika has two genetics lineages: Asian and African (7). Ecuador is susceptible to introductions of arboviruses transmitted by several mosquito vectors that are either well established or recently introduced and has thus experienced multiple and repeated introductions of these diseases. Of these, at present, only yellow fever has a widely available and licensed vaccine.