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Serological evidence of horses’ infection with ZIKAV and DENV1 in French pacific islands
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Edité par CCSD -
International audience. BackgroundNew Caledonia (NC) and French Polynesia (FP) are areas with highcirculation of arboviruses. A large serosurvey among horses fromNC and FP was carried out to investigate the seroprevalence of flaviviruses in the horse population.Methods293 equines were sampled and sera analyzed against flavivirusesusing a competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (cELISA).The positive sera were then confirmed by flavivirus-specific microsphere immunoassay (MIA) and seroneutralization tests.ResultsThis serosurvey highlighted that 16.6% (27/163) and 30.8% (40/130) ofhorses were positive with cELISA in NC and FP respectively while theMIA technique, targeting only flaviviruses responsible for neuroinvasive infections in horses (i.e. WNV, JEV, and TBEV) showed negativeresults for more than 83% (56/67) of ELISA-positive animals. Seroneutralization tests with the main flaviviruses circulating in the areasrevealed that 6.1% (10/163; confidence interval [95% CI] 2.4%–9.8%)of sera in NC and 7.7% (10/130; 95% CI 4.8%–15.2%) in FP were positive for DENV1 while 4.3% (7/163; 95% CI 1.2%–7.4%) in NC and 15.3%(20/130; 95% CI 9.1%–21.5%) in FP were found positive for ZIKAV.Comparatively, seroprevalence of JEV and WNV flaviviruses weremuch lower (less than 2%) in the two areas.ConclusionThis seroprevalence study in horses’ population shows that horsepopulation can be infected by DEN and ZIKA arboviruses and thatthese viruses induce seroconversions in horses. The consequencesof these infections in horses and the role of horses as amplifier hostof these viruses are some questions which deserve complementaryinvestigation.