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Mosquito repellent News - Latest News on Mosquito Repellents |
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Scientists have
identified a new type of mosquito. It is a subgroup
of Anopheles gambiae,
the insect species responsible for most of the malaria
transmission in Africa. Researchers
tell Science magazine
that this new mosquito appears to be very susceptible to the
parasite that causes the disease - which raises concern. The type may have evaded classification
until now because it rests away from human dwellings where most
scientific collections tend to be made. Dr Michelle Riehle, from the Pasteur
Institute in Paris, France, and colleagues made their discovery
in Burkina Faso, where they gathered mosquitoes from ponds and
puddles near villages over a period of four years. When they
examined these insects in the lab, they found many to be
genetically distinct from any
A. gambiae
insects previously recorded. The team grew generations of the unique
subtype in the lab to assess their susceptibility to the malaria
parasite and this revealed them to be especially vulnerable,
more so than indoor-resting insect types. But Pasteur team-member Dr Ken Vernick
cautioned that these mosquitoes' significance for malaria
transmission had yet to be established. "We are in a zone where we need to do
some footwork in the field to identify a means to capture the
wild adults of the outdoor-resting sub-group," he told BBC News. |
 Anopheles gambiae is responsible for the vast majority of malaria cases in Africa |
"Then we can test them and measure their
level of infection with malaria, and then we can put a number on
how much - if any - of the actual malaria transmission this
outdoor-resting subgroup is responsible for." The researchers report that the new
subgroup could be quite a recent development in mosquito
evolution and urge further investigation to understand better
the consequences for malaria control. |
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However, the method is also likely to
introduce a bias into the populations under study. Commenting on the study, Dr Gareth
Lycett, a malaria researcher from the Liverpool School of
Tropical Medicine in the UK, said it was an interesting advance
that might have important implications for tackling malaria. |
 Larvae are collected from pools of water for study |
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"To control malaria in an area you need
to know what mosquitoes are passing on the disease in that
district, and to do that you need sampling methods that record
all significant disease vectors," he told BBC News. "You need to determine what they feed on,
when and where, and whether they are infectious. And where
non-house-resting mosquitoes are contributing to disease
transmission, devise effective control methods that will
complement bed-net usage and house spraying. "A recent 12m-euro multinational project
(AvecNET), funded by the European Union, and led by the
Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine has the specific aims of
doing just this." According to the World Health
Organization (WHO), there are more than 200 million cases of
malaria worldwide each year, resulting in hundreds of thousands
of deaths, most of them in Africa. Malaria is caused by Plasmodium
parasites. The parasites are spread to people through the bites
of infected female Anopheles mosquitoes. |
| Courtesy of BBC News |
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