Metrics details. The threat of mosquito-borne diseases is increasing in continental Europe as demonstrated by several autochthonous chikungunya, dengue and West Nile virus outbreaks. In Switzerland, despite the presence of competent vectors, routine surveillance of arboviruses in mosquitoes is not being carried out, mainly due to the high costs associated with the need of a constant cold chain and laborious processing of thousands of mosquitoes.
An alternative approach is using honey-baited nucleic acid preserving cards FTA cards to collect mosquito saliva that may be analysed for arboviruses. Here, we evaluate whether FTA cards could be used to detect potentially emerging viruses in an area of low virus prevalence in combination with an effective mosquito trap.
We then screened both the mosquitoes and the FTA cards for the presence of arboviruses using reverse-transcription PCR. The efficacy of the compared trap types was evaluated using generalized linear mixed models. On average From the total of collected mosquitoes, we screened Aedes and Culex females for the presence of arboviruses.
A pool of six Cx. Remarkably, only two of the six Culex mosquitoes fed on the honey-bait, emphasising the high sensitivity of the method. In addition, two Ae. Based on our results we conclude that honey-baited FTA cards, in combination with the Box gravid trap, are an effective method for arbovirus surveillance in areas of low prevalence, particularly where resources are limited for preservation and screening of individual mosquitoes.
Arthropod-borne viruses arboviruses represent a serious public health problem as increasingly more viruses are re- emerging and spreading globally [ 1 ]. This trend is a consequence of growing global trade and travel activities, climate change and the high adaptability of viruses and their vectors [ 2 , 3 ]. The devastating Zika virus ZIKV outbreak that struck the Americas in is the most recent example of how fast arboviruses can spread outside their endemic to other areas where mosquito vectors are already present and environmental conditions are suitable [ 4 ].
