Investigation of the prevalence of Japanese encephalitis in Jingdong County, Yunnan.

Objective To explore the prevalence of Japanese encephalitis(JE) in Jingdong County,Yunnan Province.Methods Mosquito lamp traps were used to capture mosquitoes overnight.RT-PCR was used to detect the virus in mosquitoes infected with the Japanese encephalitis virus(JEV),and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay(ELISA) was used to detect JEV antibodies in healthy residents.Results A total of 6 653 individual mosquitoes from 15 species in 4 genera were collected.Of these mosquito species,Culex tritaeniorhynchus and Anopheles sinensis were the local dominant species,and they accounted for 82.07% and 10.46% of the total mosquitoes collected.RT-PCR detected a JEV strain in both Cx.tritaeniorhynchus and An.sinensis in 16 batches of 1 310 individual mosquitoes.ELISA detected JEV antibodies at a rate of 72.96% from the sera of healthy residents,and there was a significant difference between age groups(χ2=51.589,P0.01).Conclusion There are a relatively large number of vectors of Japanese encephalitis in Jingdong County,and Cx.tritaeniorhynchus and An.sinensis play an important roles in local JE transmission.