Mosquitoes can spread Zika virus to their eggs, complicating extermination drive

Female mosquitoes can transmit the Zika virus to their eggs and offspring, suggesting that efforts to kill adult mosquitoes will fall short, researchers said Monday.

Researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas, wanted to see if female mosquitoes could pass the infection to their eggs, much the way they can if infected with dengue or yellow fever.

So in the laboratory, they injected mosquitoes with the Zika virus.

The mosquitoes were fed and within a week, they laid eggs. Researchers incubated the eggs and reared the hatched larvae.

Tests on the mosquitoes showed that one in 290 had Zika virus.

“The ratio may sound low, but when you consider the number of Aedes aegypti in a tropical urban community, it is likely high enough to allow some virus to persist, even when infected adult mosquitoes are killed,” said study co-author Robert Tesh.