Dengue virus (DENV) is the most prevalent arthropod-borne human virus, able to infect and replicate in human dendritic cells (DCs), inducing their activation and the production of proinflammatory cytokines. However, DENV can successfully evade the immune response in order to produce disease in humans. Several mechanisms of immune evasion have been suggested for DENV, most of them involving interference with type I interferon (IFN) signaling. We recently reported that DENV infection of human DCs does not induce type I IFN production by those infected DCs, impairing their ability to prime naive T cells toward Th1 immunity. In this article, we report that DENV also reduces the ability of DCs to produce type I IFN in response to several inducers, such as infection with other viruses or exposure to Toll-like receptor (TLR) ligands, indicating that DENV antagonizes the type I IFN production pathway in human DCs. DENV-infected human DCs showed a reduced type I IFN response to Newcastle disease virus (NDV), Sendai virus (SeV), and Semliki Forest virus (SFV) infection and to the TLR3 agonist poly(I:C). This inhibitory effect is DENV dose dependent, requires DENV replication, and takes place in DENV-infected DCs as early as 2 h after infection. Expressing individual proteins of DENV in the presence of an IFN-␣/ production inducer reveals that a catalytically active viral protease complex is required to reduce type I IFN production significantly. These results provide a new mechanism by which DENV evades the immune system in humans.Dengue virus (DENV), a member of the Flaviviridae family and grouped within the Flavivirus genus (27), is the most prevalent arthropod-borne human virus with significant medical and biodefense importance (8,27). DENV is transmitted by mosquitoes, usually Aedes aegypti, with an estimated 100 million cases per year and 2.5 billion people at risk (53). Clinical manifestations include dengue fever, a febrile illness with rash, and dengue hemorrhagic fever, a severe and often lethal illness (53). There are four DENV serotypes (DENV1 to -4), and infection with one serotype confers life-long protection against that serotype at least by the induction of neutralizing antibodies (17). Currently there is no vaccine or effective antiviral treatment against this virus, and the most effective protective measures involve mosquito control.The DENV genome is a positive-strand RNA molecule of about 11 kb in length, with one single open reading frame (ORF) flanked by 5Ј and 3Ј nontranslated regions (27). After viral infection and the release of the viral nucleocapsid into the cytosol, a 3,391-amino-acid (aa)-long polyprotein is translated from the viral RNA at the surface of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) (27). This polyprotein is cleaved into three structural (C, prM, and E) and seven nonstructural (NS1, NS2A, NS2B, NS3, NS4A, NS4B, and NS5) proteins due to the combined and coordinated activities of host cell proteases in the ER and the viral protease complex (NS2B3) in the cytoplasm (27). The viral protease cle...