Infection Model Developed for Tickborne Flaviviruses

Flaviviruses such as Powassan virus are the cause for various diseases like dengue fever and West Nile fever which are spread by mosquitoes or by tick.

A laboratory model has been developed to study ticks that transmit flaviviruses like Powassan virus, reveal scientists of National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Powassan virus was implicated in the death of a New York man earlier this year.

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‘In the U.S, about 75 cases of Powassan virus infection have been reported in the last ten years.’

The unusual model involves culturing organs taken from Ixodes scapularis ticks and then infecting those organ cultures with flaviviruses, according to researchers at Rocky Mountain Laboratories, part of NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

The researchers say the culture model will greatly increase knowledge about how flaviviruses infect ticks and could become a tool to evaluate medical countermeasures against tick-borne viruses.

Flaviviruses are the cause of diseases spread by mosquitoes (e.g., dengue fever and West Nile fever) and by ticks (e.g., Powassan virus disease and tick-borne encephalitis).

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Powassan virus and the closely related deer tick virus are the only flaviviruses known to be spread by ticks in North America.

In the last 10 years, about 75 U.S. cases of Powassan virus infection have been reported, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Powassan virus infection can result in fever, headache, vomiting, weakness, confusion, seizures, memory loss, and death. No licensed treatments or vaccines are available for Powassan virus disease.

The NIAID scientists developed their model by dissecting three tick organs the midgut, salivary glands and nervous tissue and then culturing flaviviruses in those organs, evaluating their viability over several days. They found that Powassan virus and the related Langat virus could infect and spread in salivary glands and midgut.

Langat virus is found typically in Southeast Asia and is an ideal model virus for study because it causes only rare, mild infections in people.

Source-Eurekalert