Department of Zoology, Faculty of Science, Tanta University, Tanta 31527, Egypt.
Department of Zoology, Faculty of Science, Tanta University, Tanta 31527, Egypt.
J Invertebr Pathol. 2022 Mar;189:107719. doi: 10.1016/j.jip.2022.107719. Epub 2022 Jan 24.
Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a blood-borne virus. Given that mosquitoes can take blood meals from HCV patients, we aimed to test whether HCV in the blood meal can induce alterations in the biology of Culex pipiens. To address this aim, Cx. pipiens females were fed HCV-negative blood from healthy individuals or HCV-positive fresh blood samples harvested from viremic HCV patients. Replication of HCV in mosquitoes was confirmed by negative strand-specific RT-PCR and sequencing of RNA extracted from the mosquito bodies 7 days post-feeding. In addition, several parameters that determine the fitness of the mosquitoes were measured. Virus acquisition was associated with alterations in the architecture of the gut microvilli and the immune response, indicated by an increase in phenol oxidase activity. Interestingly, the mosquitoes that were fed the HCV-positive blood meal showed shorter median longevity (8 days) and laid fewer eggs than the control mosquitoes. Furthermore, the offspring of females fed the HCV-positive blood meal demonstrated a lower emergence rate than the controls. In sum, the results indicate that feeding on HCV by Cx. pipiens decreases fitness, which may, in turn, affect its potential as a vector.
丙型肝炎病毒 (HCV) 是一种血源性病原体。鉴于蚊子可以从 HCV 患者身上吸食血液，我们旨在测试血液中的 HCV 是否会导致库蚊生物学特性发生改变。为此，我们用来自健康个体的 HCV 阴性血液或从 HCV 阳性的病毒血症患者身上采集的新鲜血液样本喂养雌性库蚊。通过负链特异性 RT-PCR 和从蚊子体内提取的 RNA 测序，在 7 天后确认了 HCV 在蚊子体内的复制。此外，还测量了几个决定蚊子适应能力的参数。病毒的获得与肠道微绒毛结构和酚氧化酶活性增加导致的免疫反应改变有关。有趣的是，与对照组相比，喂食 HCV 阳性血餐的蚊子的中位寿命（8 天）更短，产卵量更少。此外，喂食 HCV 阳性血餐的雌蚊的后代出现率低于对照组。总之，结果表明，库蚊吸食 HCV 会降低其适应能力，从而可能影响其作为传播媒介的潜力。
