Mayaro virus infection in French Guiana, a cross sectional study 2003–2019

Mayaro Virus is an emerging arbovirus which can be responsible of important outbreaks in tropical regions. A retrospective study was performed in French Guiana, an ultraperipheral region of Europe in Amazonia. We identified 17 human cases between 2003 and 2019. The clinical and biological picture was close to Chikungunya with fever and arthralgia. One patient had acute meningo-encephalitis, and 4 had persistent arthralgia. Physicians should be aware of this virus, as imported cases in Europe have already occurred. Latin America has experienced several epidemics of arboviruses in recent years, some known for a long time, such as the dengue virus, and others of more recent introduction such as the chikungunya or Zika viruses. There are other arboviruses for the moment more discreet which are rife with low noise in several countries of the continent, such as the Mayaro virus. This alphavirus, with a presentation similar to that of the chikungunya virus, is currently confined to transmission by forest mosquitoes, but its potential to be transmitted by coastal mosquitoes such as Aedes aegypti, make it a potential candidate for a continent-wide epidemic. It therefore seems necessary to know this virus as well as possible in order to anticipate the occurrence of a possible new epidemic. We present here a both demographic and clinical study of this endemic arbovirus disease in French Guiana. •Mayaro virus may present as a “chikungunya-like” clinical picture.•Like the chikungunya virus, Mayaro virus can be the cause of prolonged clinical articular forms in the course of the acute episode.•This virus can be responsible for acute central nervous system infection such as acute meningitis and acute meningoencephalitis.•Due to the greater frequency of other arboviruses, clinicians do not often think of looking for this virus, which should, however, be mentioned before any clinical table with fever or febrile polyarthralgia for anyone living or returning from Latin America.