Assessing potential countermeasures against the dengue epidemic in non-tropical urban cities.

Background: Dengue is a common mosquito-borne viral disease epidemic especially in tropical and sub-tropical regions where water sanitation is not substantially controlled. However, dengue epidemics sometimes occur in non-tropical urban cities with substantial water sanitary control. Using a mathematical model, we investigate what conditions can be important for a dengue epidemic to occur in an urban city such as Tokyo, where vectors are active only in summer and there are little number of vectors around hosts.