Households as hotspots of Lassa fever? Assessing the spatial distribution of Lassa virus-infected rodents in rural villages of Guinea.

ABSTRACT: The Natal multimammate mouse (Mastomys natalensis) is the reservoir host of Lassa virus (LASV), an arenavirus that causes Lassa haemorrhagic fever in humans in West Africa. While previous studies suggest that spillover risk is focal within rural villages due to the spatial behaviour of the rodents, the level of clustering was never specifically assessed. Nevertheless, detailed information on the spatial distribution of infected rodents would be highly valuable to optimize LASV-control campaigns, which are limited to rodent control or interrupting human-rodent contact considering that a human vaccine is not available. Here, we analysed data from a four-year field experiment to investigate whether LASV-infected rodents cluster in households in six rural villages in Guinea. Our analyse

SUBMITTER: Marien J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7336995 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature