Saliva collection via capillary method may underestimate arboviral transmission by mosquitoes

BACKGROUND: Arthropod-borne viruses (arboviruses) impose a major health and economic burden on human populations globally, with mosquitoes serving as important vectors. Measuring the ability of a mosquito population to transmit an arbovirus is important in terms of evaluating its public health risk. In the laboratory, a variety of methods are used to estimate arboviral transmission by mosquitoes, including indirect methods involving viral detection from mosquito saliva collected by forced salivation. The accuracy of indirect methods to estimate arbovirus transmission to live animal hosts has not been fully evaluated. METHODS: We compared three commonly used proxies of arboviral transmission, namely, the presence of virus in mosquito legs, in salivary glands (SG) and in saliva collected in capillary tubes using forced salivation, with direct transmission estimates from mosquitoes to suckling mice. We analyzed five vector-virus combinations, including Aedes aegypti infected with chikungunya virus, West Nile virus and Zika virus; Culex quinquefasciatus infected with West Nile virus; and Aedes triseriatus infected with La Crosse virus. RESULTS: Comparatively, the methods of detecting virus infection in mosquito legs and in SG were equally accurate in predicting transmission. Overall, the presence of virus in mosquito legs was a more accurate predictor of transmission than the commonly implemented viral detection method using forced salivation into a capillary tube, and was subject to less technical variation. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that, in general, forced salivation methods tend to underestimate virus transmission, and they provide confidence in the use of mosquito leg screens to evaluate the transmission potential of a mosquito population. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT: [Image: see text] SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13071-022-05198-7.