Development of Wolbachia as an effective and sustainable approach to reduce dengue transmission.

The program is testing whether infecting Aedes aegypti mosquitoes with the common bacterium Wolbachia will prevent the mosquitoes from being able to transmit the dengue virus (and also the Chikungunya and yellow fever virus). Laboratory results show that Wolbachia infection dramatically reduces viral replication within vector mosquitoes, and eliminates or substantially delays appearance of virus in mosquito saliva making the mosquito an incompetent vector for dengue virus as well as other pathogens. Wolbachia bacteria are very efficiently passed by a mother mosquito to her progeny, and thus are able to spread rapidly into local mosquito populations. In initial field trials in Australia, the Wolbachia infection quickly became established within native Aedes aegypti populations. These trials have demonstrated that the Wolbachia technology can be practically deployed at a limited scale, is stable in the field, is acceptable to communities and regulators, and is predicted by modeling to have a major impact on dengue transmission. Similar trials will soon begin in Vietnam and Indonesia. The technology, if it functions as envisioned, will provide an area-wide solution to dengue transmission control, capable of spreading and maintaining itself without the need for reapplication and without need for human behavior change.