BACKGROUND:West Nile virus (WNV) is maintained in an enzootic cycle between reservoir host birds and Culex (Cx.) spp. mosquitoes. This relationship presents a potential target for vector control strategies. Ivermectin (IVM), an endectocidal drug that selectively affects invertebrates while remaining safe at high concentrations in mammals and birds, can be delivered to Culex tarsalis via blood meals from birds fed IVM-treated bird feed. In this study, we evaluated the safety, efficacy, and utility of IVM-treated bird feed as a novel vector control strategy by assessing its impact on multiple bird species and mosquitoes. METHODS:Mosquitoes were collected during peak WNV transmission season in Northern Colorado and DNA extracted from blood meals to determine host species. Chickens, pigeons, zebra finches, and house sparrows were fed different formulations of IVM-treated bird feed and observed for clinical signs, and their sera were fed to Cx. tarsalis mosquitoes to evaluate mosquitocidal efficacy. Feeding rates and IVM serum concentrations in birds were analyzed using unpaired t-tests and one-way ANOVA, and mosquito survivorship was analyzed using Kaplan-Meier curves and compared using paired log-rank tests. IVM serum concentration and mosquito survivorship were compared using Spearman correlation. RESULTS:Speciation analyses conducted on blood meals from Cx. tarsalis collected during peak WNV transmission season in Northern Colorado determined that they feed primarily on songbird species that commonly visit bird feeders, with house sparrows representing the most frequent blood meal host. In laboratory experiments using multiple formulations and doses of IVM, chickens, pigeons, zebra finches, and house sparrows ate comparable amounts of IVM-treated bird feed compared to untreated feed, had similar weight gain, and exhibited no clinical signs of toxicity. Both colony-reared and locally captured Cx. tarsalis showed significant mortality after feeding on sera from IVM-treated birds compared to controls. CONCLUSIONS:These results suggest that targeting songbirds with IVM-treated bird feed should be safe for wildlife and may elicit high rates of IVM-induced mortality by reaching a large proportion of WNV vector mosquitoes via their proclivity for feeding on passerine birds.
Abstract Here we report a newly developed method utilizing long-range PCR and long-read Pacific Biosciences HiFi sequencing that successfully obtained two full-length and annotated mitochondrial genomes from Culex quinquefasciatus Say, 1823 and Culex tarsalis Coquillett, 1896, both from Maricopa County, Arizona, USA. Given the substantial burden of West Nile virus in Maricopa County over the past decade, and that these vectors are primarily responsible for spillover to human populations in the county, it is critical to better understand their distribution over time and space. This study begins to approach this need by contributing a novel approach that has resulted in the first West Nile virus vector mitochondrial genomes from Arizona. Our circular Cx. quinquefasciatus mitogenome is 15,587 bp in length, making it the first USA-based mitogenome sequenced through the AT-rich control region. The Cx. tarsalis mitochondrial genome is 16,416 bp long, longer than recently published California-based CTarK1 and Texas-based PQ585801 mitogenomes. The increased length of the Cx. tarsalis mitogenome is a result of a 905 bp insertion in the AT-rich control region, not present in the species’ publicly available mitogenomes. A maximum likelihood-based phylogenetic reconstruction supports the species designation of these newly-sequenced mitogenomes. The newly developed methodology offers a unique approach to study medically-important vector species around the globe, providing a solution to study populations through pooled vector pathogen surveillance programs.
Mosquito-borne diseases, such as malaria, dengue, and Zika, continue to pose significant threats to global health, resulting in millions of cases and thousands of deaths each year. Notably, only older mosquitoes can transmit these diseases. Therefore, accurate age estimation of mosquitoes is vital for targeted interventions and risk assessments. However, traditional methods, such as tracheole morphology analysis, are labor-intensive and have limited scalability. Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS), when coupled with artificial neural networks (ANNs), offers a robust and flexible alternative, facilitating accurate and efficient mosquito age determination even in diverse and complex environmental conditions. We analyzed 124 Aedes aegypti mosquitoes from California (CA) and Thailand (TH) using SERS, each generating 20 spectra. The ANNs utilized a multilayer perceptron with two hidden layers of 100 neurons and rectified linear unit (ReLU) activation. Classification tasks used cross-entropy loss; regression applied mean squared error. Models were trained with a 70–30 training–validation split and optimized using the Adam optimizer over 10,000 iterations. Performance metrics included accuracy, correlation coefficient (R), and root mean square error (RMSE). t-Distributed stochastic neighbor embedding (t-SNE) visualizations and confusion matrices offered additional model insights into effectiveness. The ANN models demonstrated superior performance in differentiating mosquito age relative to non-ANN methods. For female CA mosquitoes, the models classified ages from day 1 to day 21 with 84
West Nile virus (WNV) is the most common cause of mosquito-borne disease in the continental USA, with an average of 1200 severe, neuroinvasive cases reported annually from 2005 to 2021 (range 386–2873). Despite this burden, efforts to forecast WNV disease to inform public health measures to reduce disease incidence have had limited success. Here, we analyze forecasts submitted to the 2022 WNV Forecasting Challenge, a follow-up to the 2020 WNV Forecasting Challenge. Forecasting teams submitted probabilistic forecasts of annual West Nile virus neuroinvasive disease (WNND) cases for each county in the continental USA for the 2022 WNV season. We assessed the skill of team-specific forecasts, baseline forecasts, and an ensemble created from team-specific forecasts. We then characterized the impact of model characteristics and county-specific contextual factors (e.g., population) on forecast skill. Ensemble forecasts for 2022 anticipated a season at or below median long-term WNND incidence for nearly all (> 99
Historically, poor data management has hampered the establishment and operation of wildlife health surveillance (WHS) systems and limited the integration of environmental data into One Health frameworks. Effective WHS purpose-built databases are key to solve this problem, yet the few options available remain inaccessible or narrow in scope.To address this gap, an international partnership is developing the Health and Wildlife Knowledge (HAWK) database. HAWK supports the management of diverse data generated by multiple actors and methodologies, all within a harmonized structure and vocabulary facilitating data access, analysis, communication, and reuse. Data are secured through compartmentalization across organizations and users, while supporting compliance of FAIR and CARE data principles.Slated for release in late 2025, HAWK is envisioned as a global public good to encourage data compatibility and best practices in the wildlife conservation and One Health communities, independent of languages and location, with minimal to no cost for users.
Abstract Background Aedes aegypti is the primary mosquito vector for several arboviruses, such as dengue, chikungunya and Zika viruses, which cause frequent outbreaks of human disease in tropical and subtropical regions. Control of these outbreaks relies on vector control, commonly in the form of insecticide sprays that target adult female mosquitoes. However, the spatial coverage and frequency of sprays needed to optimize effectiveness are unclear. In this study, we characterize the effect of ultra-low-volume (ULV) indoor spraying of pyrethroid insecticides on Ae. aegypti abundance within households. We also evaluate the effects of spray events during recent time periods or in neighboring households. Improved understanding of the duration and distance of the impact of a spray intervention on Ae. aegypti populations can inform vector control interventions, in addition to modeling efforts that contrast vector control strategies. Methods This project analyzes data from two large-scale experiments that involved six cycles of indoor pyrethroid spray applications in 2 years in the Amazonian city of Iquitos, Peru. We developed spatial multi-level models to disentangle the reduction in Ae. aegypti abundance that resulted from (i) recent ULV treatment within households and (ii) ULV treatment of adjacent or nearby households. We compared fits of models across a range of candidate weighting schemes for the spray effect, based on different temporal and spatial decay functions to understand lagged ULV effects. Results Our results suggested that the reduction of Ae. aegypti in a household was mainly due to spray events occurring within the same household, with no additional effect of sprays that occurred in neighboring households. Effectiveness of a spray intervention should be measured based on time since the most recent spray event, as we found no cumulative effect of sequential sprays. Based on our model, we estimated the spray effect is reduced by 50% approximately 28 days after the spray event. Conclusions The reduction of Ae. aegypti in a household was mainly determined by the number of days since the last spray intervention in that same household, highlighting the importance of spray coverage in high-risk areas with a spray frequency determined by local viral transmission dynamics. Graphical abstract
Background: Between January 1, 2011, and December 31, 2017, over 12,000 case reports of Lyme disease (LD) were submitted to the California Reportable Disease Information Exchange for further investigation. The number of case reports has tripled compared to previous years, emphasizing the need for efficient estimation and classification methods. We evaluated whether estimation procedures can be implemented in a low-incidence state such as California to correctly classify a case of LD, similar to those procedures used in high-incidence states.Objective: The purpose of this study was to identify whether a minimum number of variables was sufficient to reliably classify cases in California and potentially reduce workload while maintaining the ability to track LD trends in California.Methods: To determine the relative value of diagnostic information, we compared five candidate logistic regression models that were used to classify cases based on information that varied in its degree of difficulty for collection.Results: Our results using California's surveillance data showed that automatically reported data were not sufficient, additional information such as, a patient's clinical presentation and travel history were necessary in a low-incidence state to improve the overall sensitivity of the models.Conclusion: This study may help inform public health surveillance efforts by demonstrating that both clinical and travel information are required to accurately classify a case of LD in a low-incidence state.
Ivermectin (IVM)-treated birds provide the potential for targeted control of Culex mosquitoes to reduce West Nile virus (WNV) transmission. Ingestion of IVM increases mosquito mortality, which could reduce WNV transmission from birds to humans and in enzootic maintenance cycles affecting predominantly bird-feeding mosquitoes and from birds to humans. This strategy might also provide an alternative method for WNV control that is less hampered by insecticide resistance and the logistics of large-scale pesticide applications. Through a combination of field studies and modeling, we assessed the feasibility and impact of deploying IVM-treated birdfeed in residential neighborhoods to reduce WNV transmission. We first tracked 105 birds using radio telemetry and radio frequency identification to monitor their feeder usage and locations of nocturnal roosts in relation to five feeder sites in a neighborhood in Fort Collins, Colorado. Using these results, we then modified a compartmental model of WNV transmission to account for the impact of IVM on mosquito mortality and spatial movement of birds and mosquitoes on the neighborhood level. We found that, while the number of treated lots in a neighborhood strongly influenced the total transmission potential, the arrangement of treated lots in a neighborhood had little effect. Increasing the proportion of treated birds, regardless of the WNV competency status, resulted in a larger reduction in infection dynamics than only treating competent birds. Taken together, model results indicate that deployment of IVM-treated feeders could reduce local transmission throughout the WNV season, including reducing the enzootic transmission prior to the onset of human infections, with high spatial coverage and rates of IVM-induced mortality in mosquitoes. To improve predictions, more work is needed to refine estimates of daily mosquito movement in urban areas and rates of IVM-induced mortality. Our results can guide future field trials of this control strategy.
Current knowledge of dengue virus (DENV) transmission provides only a partial understanding of a complex and dynamic system yielding a public health track record that has more failures than successes. An important part of the problem is that the foundation for contemporary interventions includes a series of longstanding, but untested, assumptions based on a relatively small portion of the human population; i.e., people who are convenient to study because they manifest clinically apparent disease. Approaching dengue from the perspective of people with overt illness has produced an extensive body of useful literature. It has not, however, fully embraced heterogeneities in virus transmission dynamics that are increasingly recognized as key information still missing in the struggle to control the most important insect-transmitted viral infection of humans. Only in the last 20 years have there been significant efforts to carry out comprehensive longitudinal dengue studies. This manuscript provides the rationale and comprehensive, integrated description of the methodology for a five-year longitudinal cohort study based in the tropical city of Iquitos, in the heart of the Peruvian Amazon. Primary data collection for this study was completed in 2019. Although some manuscripts have been published to date, our principal objective here is to support subsequent publications by describing in detail the structure, methodology, and significance of a specific research program. Our project was designed to study people across the entire continuum of disease, with the ultimate goal of quantifying heterogeneities in human variables that affect DENV transmission dynamics and prevention. Because our study design is applicable to other Aedes transmitted viruses, we used it to gain insights into Zika virus (ZIKV) transmission when during the project period ZIKV was introduced and circulated in Iquitos. Our prospective contact cluster investigation design was initiated by detecttion of a person with a symptomatic DENV infection and then followed that person’s immediate contacts. This allowed us to monitor individuals at high risk of DENV infection, including people with clinically inapparent and mild infections that are otherwise difficult to detect. We aimed to fill knowledge gaps by defining the contribution to DENV transmission dynamics of (1) the understudied majority of DENV-infected people with inapparent and mild infections and (2) epidemiological, entomological, and socio-behavioral sources of heterogeneity. By accounting for factors underlying variation in each person’s contribution to transmission we sought to better determine the type and extent of effort needed to better prevent virus transmission and disease.
Background West Nile virus (WNV) is the leading cause of mosquito-borne illness in the continental USA. WNV occurrence has high spatiotemporal variation, and current approaches to targeted control of the virus are limited, making forecasting a public health priority. However, little research has been done to compare strengths and weaknesses of WNV disease forecasting approaches on the national scale. We used forecasts submitted to the 2020 WNV Forecasting Challenge, an open challenge organized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to assess the status of WNV neuroinvasive disease (WNND) prediction and identify avenues for improvement. Methods We performed a multi-model comparative assessment of probabilistic forecasts submitted by 15 teams for annual WNND cases in US counties for 2020 and assessed forecast accuracy, calibration, and discriminatory power. In the evaluation, we included forecasts produced by comparison models of varying complexity as benchmarks of forecast performance. We also used regression analysis to identify modeling approaches and contextual factors that were associated with forecast skill. Results Simple models based on historical WNND cases generally scored better than more complex models and combined higher discriminatory power with better calibration of uncertainty. Forecast skill improved across updated forecast submissions submitted during the 2020 season. Among models using additional data, inclusion of climate or human demographic data was associated with higher skill, while inclusion of mosquito or land use data was associated with lower skill. We also identified population size, extreme minimum winter temperature, and interannual variation in WNND cases as county-level characteristics associated with variation in forecast skill. Conclusions Historical WNND cases were strong predictors of future cases with minimal increase in skill achieved by models that included other factors. Although opportunities might exist to specifically improve predictions for areas with large populations and low or high winter temperatures, areas with high case-count variability are intrinsically more difficult to predict. Also, the prediction of outbreaks, which are outliers relative to typical case numbers, remains difficult. Further improvements to prediction could be obtained with improved calibration of forecast uncertainty and access to real-time data streams (e.g. current weather and preliminary human cases). Graphical Abstract
Dengue virus (DENV) transmission from humans to mosquitoes is a poorly documented, but critical component of DENV epidemiology. Magnitude of viremia is the primary determinant of successful human-to-mosquito DENV transmission. People with the same level of viremia, however, can vary in their infectiousness to mosquitoes as a function of other factors that remain to be elucidated. Here, we report on a field-based study in the city of Iquitos, Peru, where we conducted direct mosquito feedings on people naturally infected with DENV and that experienced mild illness. We also enrolled people naturally infected with Zika virus (ZIKV) after the introduction of ZIKV in Iquitos during the study period. Of the 54 study participants involved in direct mosquito feedings, 43 were infected with DENV-2, two with DENV-3, and nine with ZIKV. Our analysis excluded participants whose viremia was detectable at enrollment but undetectable at the time of mosquito feeding, which was the case for all participants with DENV-3 and ZIKV infections. We analyzed the probability of onward transmission during 50 feeding events involving 27 participants infected with DENV-2 based on the presence of infectious virus in mosquito saliva 7–16 days post blood meal. Transmission probability was positively associated with the level of viremia and duration of extrinsic incubation in the mosquito. In addition, transmission probability was influenced by the day of illness in a non-monotonic fashion; i.e., transmission probability increased until 2 days after symptom onset and decreased thereafter. We conclude that mildly ill DENV-infected humans with similar levels of viremia during the first two days after symptom onset will be most infectious to mosquitoes on the second day of their illness. Quantifying variation within and between people in their contribution to DENV transmission is essential to better understand the biological determinants of human infectiousness, parametrize epidemiological models, and improve disease surveillance and prevention strategies.
PROs developed de novo, using the FDA guidance may involve structured patient interviews or focus groups. Qualitative Research is a methodology for eliciting and coding interviews and produces concepts or themes. These concepts are used to develop items in a PRO for use as an endpoint in Clinical trials. A convention in the field is that interviews and code/concept elicitation are considered complete when subsequent interviews produces "no new concepts" -termed "saturation". FDA reviewers frequently challenge PRO developers whether there are sufficient patient interviews to confirm that saturation is achieved after occurrence of zero new concepts. Several authors have reported that concrete criteria are need for confirming that saturation is achieved (Francis 2010, Mason 2010, Marshall 2013). I provide statistical methodology for confirming saturation, suitable for review by a regulatory authority. Type I error for saturation, may occur if further interviews elicited more concepts after first occurrence of saturation. I use published data set on code elicitation (Guest, 2006) to demonstrate that saturation may occur more than once in a sequence of interviews. I provide a statistical definition for saturation in qualitative research, that addresses regulatory concerns for PRO's developed for use as a clinical trial endpoint in a regulatory submission.
St. Louis encephalitis virus (SLEV) is an endemic flavivirus in the western and southeastern United States, including California. From 1938 to 2003, the virus was detected annually in California, but after West Nile virus (WNV) arrived in 2003, SLEV was not detected again until it re-emerged in Riverside County in 2015. The re-emerging virus in California and other areas of the western US is SLEV genotype III, which previously had been detected only in Argentina, suggesting a South American origin. This study describes SLEV activity in California since its re-emergence in 2015 and compares it to WNV activity during the same period. From 2015 to 2020, SLEV was detected in 1,650 mosquito pools and 26 sentinel chickens, whereas WNV was detected concurrently in 18,108 mosquito pools and 1,542 sentinel chickens from the same samples. There were 24 reported human infections of SLEV in 10 California counties, including two fatalities (case fatality rate: 8%), compared to 2,469 reported human infections of WNV from 43 California counties, with 143 fatalities (case fatality rate: 6%). From 2015 through 2020, SLEV was detected in 17 (29%) of California’s 58 counties, while WNV was detected in 54 (93%). Although mosquitoes and sentinel chickens have been tested routinely for arboviruses in California for over fifty years, surveillance has not been uniform throughout the state. Of note, since 2005 there has been a steady decline in the use of sentinel chickens among vector control agencies, potentially contributing to gaps in SLEV surveillance. The incidence of SLEV disease in California may have been underestimated because human surveillance for SLEV relied on an environmental detection to trigger SLEV patient screening and mosquito surveillance effort is spatially variable. In addition, human diagnostic testing usually relies on changes in host antibodies and SLEV infection can be indistinguishable from infection with other flaviviruses such as WNV, which is more prevalent.
BACKGROUND:Vector control strategies typically rely on pesticides to target mosquitoes involved in enzootic and zoonotic transmission of West Nile virus (WNV). Nevertheless, increasing insecticide resistance and a desire to reduce pesticide usage provide the impetus for developing alternative strategies. Ivermectin (IVM), an antiparasitic drug which is widely used in human and veterinary medicine, is a potential alternative for targeted control because Culex mosquitoes experience increased mortality following ingestion of IVM in bloodmeals. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS:We conducted a randomized field trial to investigate the impact of treating backyard chicken flocks with IVM in urban neighborhoods across Davis, California on mosquito populations and WNV transmission dynamics. We observed a significant reduction in WNV seroconversions in treated vs. untreated chickens, suggesting a reduction in WNV transmission intensity around treated flocks. We also detected a reduction in parity rates of Cx. tarsalis near treated vs. untreated flocks and increased mortality in wild mosquitoes following a bloodmeal on treated chickens (IVM serum concentration > 5ng/mL) vs. chickens with IVM serum concentrations < 5 ng/mL. However, we did not find a significant difference in abundance or infection prevalence in mosquitoes between treatment groups associated with the reductions in seroconversions. Mosquito immigration from surrounding larval habitat, relatively low WNV activity in the study area, and variable IVM serum concentrations likely contributed to uncertainty about the impact. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE:Taken together, our results point to a reduction in WNV transmission due to the impact of IVM on Culex mosquito populations and support the ongoing investigation of oral administration of IVM to wild birds for local control of WNV transmission, although further work is needed to optimize dosing and understand effects on entomological endpoints.
The straw-colored fruit bat ( Eidolon helvum ) is a pteropodid whose conservation is crucial for maintaining functional connectivity of plant populations in tropical Africa. Land conversion has pushed this species to adapt to roosting in urban centers across its range. These colonies often host millions of individuals, creating intensive human-bat contact interfaces that could facilitate the spillover of coronaviruses shed by these bats. A better understanding of coronavirus dynamics in these roosts is needed to identify peak times of exposure risk in order to propose evidence-based management that supports safe human-bat coexistence, as well as the conservation of this chiropteran. We studied the temporal patterns of coronavirus shedding in E . helvum , by testing thousands of longitudinally-collected fecal samples from two spatially distant urban roosts in Ghana and Tanzania. Shedding of coronaviruses peaked during the second part of pup weaning in both roosts. Assuming that coronavirus shedding is directly related to spillover risk, our results indicate that exposure mitigation should target reducing contact between people and E . helvum roosts during the pup “weaning” period. This recommendation can be applied across the many highly-populated urban sites occupied by E . helvum across Africa.
Lyme disease (LD), caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi, is transmitted to humans in California through the bite of infected blacklegged ticks (Ixodes pacificus). Overall, the incidence of LD in California is low: approximately 0.2 confirmed cases per 100,000 population. However, California’s unique ecological diversity results in wide variation in local risk, including regions with local foci at elevated risk of human disease. The diagnosis of LD can be challenging in California because the prior probability of infection for individual patients is generally low. Combined with nonspecific symptoms and complicated laboratory testing, California physicians need a high level of awareness of LD in California to recognize and diagnose LD efficiently. This research addresses an under-studied area of physicians’ knowledge and practice of the testing and treatment of LD in a low-incidence state. We assessed knowledge and practices related to LD diagnosis using an electronic survey distributed to physicians practicing in California through mixed sampling methods. Overall, responding physicians in California had a general awareness of Lyme disease and were knowledgeable regarding diagnosis and treatment. However, we found that physicians in California could benefit from further education to improve test-ordering practices, test interpretation, and awareness of California’s disease ecology with elevated levels of focal endemicity, to improve recognition, diagnosis, and treatment of LD in California patients.
Vector-borne diseases are among the most burdensome infectious diseases worldwide with high burden to health systems in developing regions in the tropics. For many of these diseases, vector control to reduce human biting rates or arthropod populations remains the primary strategy for prevention. New vector control interventions intended to be marketed through public health channels must be assessed by the World Health Organization for public health value using data generated from large-scale trials integrating epidemiological endpoints of human health impact. Such phase III trials typically follow large numbers of study subjects to meet necessary power requirements for detecting significant differences between treatment arms, thereby generating substantive and complex datasets. Data is often gathered directly in the field, in resource-poor settings, leading to challenges in efficient data reporting and/or quality assurance. With advancing technology, mobile data collection (MDC) systems have been implemented in many studies to overcome these challenges. Here we describe the development and implementation of a MDC system during a randomized-cluster, placebo-controlled clinical trial evaluating the protective efficacy of a spatial repellent intervention in reducing human infection with Aedes-borne viruses (ABV) in the urban setting of Iquitos, Peru, as well as the data management system that supported it. We discuss the benefits, remaining capacity gaps and the key lessons learned from using a MDC system in this context in detail.
Reproductive diapause serves as biological mechanism for many insects, including the mosquito Culex pipiens , to overwinter in temperate climates. While Cx. pipiens diapause has been well-studied in the laboratory, the timing and environmental signals that promote diapause under natural conditions are less understood. In this study, we examine laboratory, semi-field, and mosquito surveillance data to define the approximate timeline and seasonal conditions that contribute to Cx. pipiens diapause across the United States. While confirming integral roles of temperature and photoperiod in diapause induction, we also demonstrate the influence of latitude, elevation, and mosquito population genetics in shaping Cx. pipiens diapause incidence across the country. Coinciding with the cessation of WNV activity, these data can have important implications for mosquito control, where targeted efforts prior to diapause induction can decrease mosquito populations and WNV overwintering to reduce mosquito-borne disease incidence the following season.
Over half the world's population is at risk for viruses transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes, such as dengue and Zika. The primary vector, Aedes aegypti, thrives in urban environments. Despite decades of effort, cases and geographic range of Aedes-borne viruses (ABVs) continue to expand. Rigorously proven vector control interventions that measure protective efficacy against ABV diseases are limited to Wolbachia in a single trial in Indonesia and do not include any chemical intervention. Spatial repellents, a new option for efficient deployment, are designed to decrease human exposure to ABVs by releasing active ingredients into the air that disrupt mosquito-human contact. A parallel, cluster-randomized controlled trial was conducted in Iquitos, Peru, to quantify the impact of a transfluthrin-based spatial repellent on human ABV infection. From 2,907 households across 26 clusters (13 per arm), 1,578 participants were assessed for seroconversion (primary endpoint) by survival analysis. Incidence of acute disease was calculated among 16,683 participants (secondary endpoint). Adult mosquito collections were conducted to compare Ae. aegypti abundance, blood-fed rate, and parity status through mixed-effect difference-in-difference analyses. The spatial repellent significantly reduced ABV infection by 34.1% (one-sided 95% CI lower limit, 6.9%; one-sided P value = 0.0236, z = 1.98). Aedes aegypti abundance and blood-fed rates were significantly reduced by 28.6 (95% CI 24.1%, ∞); z = -9.11) and 12.4% (95% CI 4.2%, ∞); z = -2.43), respectively. Our trial provides conclusive statistical evidence from an appropriately powered, preplanned cluster-randomized controlled clinical trial of the impact of a chemical intervention, in this case a spatial repellent, to reduce the risk of ABV transmission compared to a placebo.