Dengue is the most important mosquito-borne viral disease in the world [1]. Dengue is also a significant public health problem in Indonesia since the first reported dengue outbreak in 1968. All four dengue virus (DENV; Flavivirus) serotypes are detected, suggesting hyperendemicity in all of 34 provinces in Indonesia [2, 3]. Indonesia has made dengue a notifiable disease. On average, 136,670 DENV infections and 1,112 deaths were reported annually from 2013 to 2016, an incidence of about 54 dengue fever or dengue hemorrhagic fever cases per 100,000 population and a case fatality rate of approximately 1% [4]. Dengue cases in Indonesia are expected to be under-reported due to poor disease surveillance and a low level of reporting [5]. The surveillance database likely covers dengue probable cases with supportive dengue serology or with epidemiologic linkage, and dengue confirmed cases with confirmatory laboratory criteria [5, 6]. Dengue infections deprived of diagnostic tests may not end up in the surveillance database [5]. Despite the level of uncertainty on total case number, dengue visibly results in a considerable cost to the health sector, and a heavy economic and social impact is likely.
Indonesia has made progress in many areas of dengue prevention and control. On August 2016, Indonesia became the sixth country to approve the first licensed dengue vaccine, Dengvaxia® [7, 8]. To date, the vaccine so far has been approved in 20 countries and launched in 11 including Indonesia [8]. However on December 2017, the National Agency of Drug and Food (Badan POM) has suspended the use of dengue vaccine in Indonesia over safety concerns [9] and later on February 2018, the BPOM revised recommendation that the use of vaccine be limited for people 9–16 years of age who had a dengue infection prior to vaccination and that the vaccine should not be administered to people who have never had a dengue infection before [10]. There is no rapid, reliable test for previous dengue infection existing, so the Dengvaxia® vaccine cannot be widely used [11]. Nevertheless, effective vector control methods are still essential, targeting Aedes aegypti in its immature and adult stages. It has been argued that even if the current vaccine is highly targeted and low-cost, sustained mosquito control will remain cost-effective [12].
The mainstay of the current vector control program in Indonesia is environmental management, which in recent years, has emphasized community participation to reduce container breeding sites [2, 13]. The country is renowned for its 3M plus campaigns, aimed at covering and cleaning water containers and burying discarded water containers, complemented with biological approaches using natural predators or pathogens as alternatives for vector control [2, 13]. The efficacy of community-based approaches is measured by a larva free index (percentage of houses free from Ae. aegypti larvae and pupae infestation); unfortunately, data from the last five years show a larvae free index ranging from 24% − 80%, less than the target of 95% [4].
Chemical insecticides still play a central role in dengue vector control in Indonesia. Vector control during outbreaks depends primarily on chemical insecticides to effect a rapid reduction in the number of infected mosquitoes and to break the dengue transmission cycle [2, 13, 14, 15]. Since the 1970s, the organophosphates malathion and temephos have been widely used to control dengue, and starting in 1980s, dengue vector control has been highly reliant on pyrethroids. Pyrethroids are widely used, both as public health and household insecticides, and as agricultural insecticides [16]. Pyrethroids are also used for household protection against dengue (i.e. constant and uncontrolled household self-application) [17, 18]. The abundant and prolonged use of pyrethroids has led to the development of resistance in Ae. aegypti populations in many countries including Indonesia. Resistance to pyrethroids, based on bioassay data, has been reported in some areas of Indonesia [19, 20, 21, 22, 23].
Two main mechanisms for pyrethroid resistance have been identified in Ae. aegypti, metabolic resistance and target site resistance. Metabolic resistance occurs when increased levels or modified activities of one or more detoxifying enzymes result in a more rapid detoxification of the insecticide, preventing the insecticide from reaching its target in the nervous system. Metabolic resistance involves three groups of enzymes: esterases, multi-function oxidases P450 and glutathione s-transferases (GST) [24, 25, 26]. Limited studies about metabolic resistance based on biochemical assays are available for Indonesian dengue vectors [23, 27, 28, 29].
Pyrethroids act on the insect nervous system, targeting the voltage sensitive sodium channel (VSSC). They modify the gating kinetics of the channel by slowing both the activation and the inactivation, stimulating the nerve cells to produce repetitive discharge that lead to paralysis and death of insects, an effect known as knockdown. Target site resistance is caused by point mutations in the VSSC gene, resulting amino acid substitutions that affect pyrethroid binding sites, being known as kdr mutations [30, 31]. A total of 12 point mutations in the Vssc of Ae. aegypti have been identified to be associated with kdr resistance to pyrethroids. Only five of these mutations have been functionally confirmed to reduce the sensitivity of mosquito sodium channels to pyrethroids including S989P, I1011M, V1016G, F1534C, and recently V410L [32]. The mutations L982W, G923V, I1011M, and V1016G were the first reported sodium channel mutations in permethrin/DDT-resistant populations of Ae. aegypti from various countries [33]. Further studies have reported novel mutations, including I1011V and V1016I in Latin American populations [34]. In Asian countries, the F1534C mutation was detected in Ae. aegypti mosquitoes from Thailand [35] and Vietnam [36]. Also, the S989P mutation was first reported in Ae aegypti populations in Thailand [37], the D1763Y mutation was reported in Taiwan population [38], and mutation T1520I was detected in Indian population [39]. Recently, the mutation V410L was firstly identified in Brazilian strains of Ae. aegypti [40], and a novel mutation V419L was found in populations from Colombia [41].
Some of these mutations, V1016G, F1534C, and S989P, are widely distributed and detected in pyrethroid-resistant populations in Southeast Asian countries including Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos [42]. Co-occurrence of kdr mutations has been a common phenomenon observed and, for some combinations, has been shown to confer a higher level of resistance than singly occurring mutations [43]. In Ae. aegypti from Southeast Asia, at least three patterns of mutational associations have been identified: V1016G/F1534C, V1016G/S989P, and V1016G/F1534C/S989P. Co-occurrence of V1016G and F1534C was reported in populations from Thailand [44], Myanmar [43], Malaysia [45] and Indonesia [46, 47, 48, 49]. Meanwhile, co-occurrence of V1016G and S989P point mutations was detected in Thailand [44], Myanmar[43], Indonesia [46, 47, 48, 49] and Papua New Guinea [50]. In addition, co-occurrence of triple mutations V1016G/F1534C/S989P in heterozygous form has been identified commonly in Ae. aegypti from Thailand [51], Myanmar [43], and Indonesia [47, 48, 49]. However, co-occurrence of triple homozygous point mutations (homozygous mutation for each of V1016G, F1534C and S989P) is very scarce having only been reported from Myanmar at a frequency of 0.98% [43] and in Indonesia in one individual (at a frequency of 0.34%) [49].
Despite all of the strategies implemented in Indonesia, the existing methods of controlling dengue have limited success. The development of a novel strategy of vector control that can be incorporated into the existing vector control strategy is essential. One of the innovative approaches to preventing transmission of dengue virus involves introduction of strains of the bacterium Wolbachia into Ae. aegypti, which has both life-shortening effects on the mosquito and direct transmission-blocking effects on dengue virus. This new strategy together with more traditional approaches for vector control including insecticide application may provide promising results to reduce dengue transmission. With the support of communities and approval from regulators, Indonesia’s first field trial of Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes began in Yogyakarta in 2014 [52]. The first field trial in two areas in the outer city of Yogyakarta has yielded results that point to local invasion, and release of Wolbachia mosquitoes on a broader scale in the inner-city areas of Yogyakarta has since been initiated in August 2016 [53].
To assist the spread of Wolbachia, insecticide resistance in the strain of Ae. aegypti being released needs to match that of the background population to ensure that released individuals persist and reproduce, allowing a Wolbachia invasion to take place [54]. In the inner city of Yogyakarta, resistance is expected because of the local heavy application of chemical insecticides. It is possible that insecticide usage is higher in these areas than in the outer rim of Yogyakarta, as inner city areas have more dengue cases [55] and are more densely populated [56]. In our previous study, we screened samples from Yogyakarta outer areas for kdr mutations and obtained a high frequency of kdr alleles in samples collected from the outer area of Yogyakarta [48]. In this paper, we have screened Yogyakarta inner city areas for kdr mutations, based on a total of 1314 individuals collected from 27 localities (Fig. 1, Table 1) and aim to compare frequency and occurrence of kdr mutations between the inner and outer city.
Table 1
Collection sites, localities and number of Ae. aegypti collected from inner city areas of Yogyakarta.
Sites | Localities | No. of samples | Geolocation coordinates (longitude, latitude) |
C1 | Suryodinigratan | 112 | 110.35971 | -7.81972 |
C2 | Mantrijeron | 25 | 110.36539 | -7.82453 |
C3 | Brontokusuman | 25 | 110.36996 | -7.82397 |
C4 | Sorosutan | 124 | 110.37840 | -7.82886 |
C5 | Kadipaten, Patehan | 34 | 110.35872 110.36015 | -7.80587 -7.81104 |
C6 | Panembahan, Keparakan, Prawirodirjan | 25 | 110.36486 110.37327 110.37287 | -7.81063 -7.81464 -7.80581 |
C7 | Notoparajan Ngampilan Ngupasan | 140 | 110.35560 110.35577 110.36199 | -7.80621 -7.79728 -7.80199 |
C8 | Wirogunan, Sorosutan | 25 | 110.37810 110.37872 | -7.81130 -7.81484 |
C9 | Tahunan, Semaki | 19 | 110.38273 | -7.81056 |
C10 | Bausasran, Gunung Ketur, Baciro, Purwokinanti | 25 | 110.37448 110.37883 110.37875 110.37382 | -7.79253 -7.80142 -7.79241 -7.79717 |
C11 | Pringgokkusuman, Sosromenduran | 21 | 110.36969 110.36458 | -7.79702 -7.79287 |
C12 | Suryatmajan, Tegal Panggung | 124 | 110.36969 110.36983 | -7.79702 -7.79350 |
C13 | Bumijo, Sosromenduran, Gowongan | 25 | 110.35676 110.36460 110.36467 | -7.78798 -7.78835 -7.78353 |
C14 | Gowongan, Kotabaru | 25 | 110.36921 110.36935 | -7.78485 -7.78920 |
C15 | Cokrodiningaratan, Terban | 88 | 110.36914 110.37384 | -7.77882 -7.77877 |
C16 | Semaki, Baciro | 68 | 110.38617 110.38211 | -7.79694 -7.79685 |
C17 | Klitren, Demangan | 25 | 110.38212 110.38219 | -7.78394 -7.78927 |
C18 | Terban, Klitren | 25 | 110.37876 110.38331 | -7.77835 -7.78029 |
R1 | Bener, Kricak, Karangwaru | 31 | 110.352325 110.360298 110.364609 | -7.77969 -7.77916 -7.77532 |
R2 | Tegalrejo, Pakuncen | 38 | 110.35648 110.35070 | -7.78339 -7.79298 |
R3 | Wirobrajan, Patangpuluhan | 49 | 110.35088 110.34646 | -7.80139 -7.80694 |
R4 | Gedongkiwo | 32 | 110.35344 | -7.82552 |
B1 | Muja Muju | 27 | 110.39291 | -7.79768 |
B2 | Muja Muju, Warung Boto, Pandeyan | 87 | 110.39259 110.38804 110.38647 | -7.80637 -7.81086 -7.81439 |
B3 | Pandeyan, Giwangan | 24 | 110.38669 110.39137 | -7.82032 -7.83290 |
Co1 | Rejojwinangun | 39 | 110.40043 | -7.81836 |
Co2 | Prenggan, Purbayan | 36 | 110.39775 | -7.82482 |
Note that localities are mapped in Fig. 1. The clusters refer to areas that are being used in a controlled intervention design to investigate the impact of Wolbachia on dengue incidence by the World Mosquito Program (Indonesia). Areas marked by an R are not included as part of this design. |