HEPATITIS C, which infects 3 per cent of the world鈥檚 population, is spread
mainly by infected blood transfusions and needles. But the virus can also
replicate in mosquito cells in culture, without the receptor it needs to survive
in mammalian cells, Daniel Garin of the Research Centre of the French Army
Health Service in Grenoble told the American Society for Microbiology in Los
Angeles last week.
Garin thinks mosquitoes have their own receptor for the virus, just as they
do for the closely related dengue and yellow fever viruses, raising the spectre
that the easily mutating hepatitis might become mosquito-borne. There is no
epidemiological evidence for this now, but 10 per cent of cases are of unknown
origin.