Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis Virus Transmission and Effect on Pathogenesis

Evaluation of methods to assess transmission potential of Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus by mosquitoes and estimation of mosquito saliva titers.

Determining the dose of an arbovirus transmitted by a mosquito is important to design transmission and pathogenesis studies simulating natural infection. Several different artificial infection and transmission methods used to assess vector competence and to estimate the dose injected during mosquito feeding have not been fully evaluated to determine whether they accurately reflect natural trans...

Noncytopathic replication of Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus and eastern equine encephalitis virus replicons in Mammalian cells.

Venezuelan equine encephalitis (VEE) and eastern equine encephalitis (EEE) viruses are important, naturally emerging zoonotic viruses. They are significant human and equine pathogens which still pose a serious public health threat. Both VEE and EEE cause chronic infection in mosquitoes and persistent or chronic infection in mosquito-derived cell lines. In contrast, vertebrate hosts infected wit...

Title of thesis: Role of Cytokines and Neurotrophins in the Central Nervous System in Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis Virus Pathogenesis

Infection and dissemination of Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus in the epidemic mosquito vector, Aedes taeniorhynchus.

The mosquito Aedes taeniorhynchus is an important epidemic vector of Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus (VEEV), but detailed studies of its infection are lacking. We compared infection by an epidemic VEEV strain to that by an enzootic strain using virus titrations, immunohistochemistry, and a virus expressing the green fluorescent protein. Ae. taeniorhynchus was more susceptible to the epidem...

Equine Amplification and Virulence of Subtype IE Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis Viruses Isolated during the 1993 and 1996 Mexican Epizootics

To assess the role of horses as amplification hosts during the 1993 and 1996 Mexican Venezuelan equine encephalitis (VEE) epizootics, we subcutaneously infected 10 horses by using four different equine isolates. Most horses showed little or no disease and low or nonexistent viremia. Neurologic disease developed in only 1 horse, and brain histopathologic examination showed meningeal lymphocytic ...