Researchers say simultaneous infection of Zika, chikungunya possible

New research presented at the 2016 America Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene annual meeting found mosquitoes can carry more than one flavivirus at a time, enabling them to potentially infect humans with Zika and chikungunya viruses in a single bite.“There was a large-scale study recently in Nicaragua where they found that over 20% of the patients that have one arbovirus actually were coinfected with another one, so we figured there must be a reasonable number of mosquitos that actually are exposed to two viruses at the same time,” Claudia Rückert, PhD, virology researcher from Colorado State University, told Infectious Disease News. “We want to know, can a mosquito transmit two viruses at the same time, and how are the dynamics of virus infection changed by the presence of another virus?”