To stop malaria, let mosquitoes breed
Published 08 April, 2009, 13:12
Edited 28 December, 2009, 19:40
Letting mosquitoes reproduce rather than killing them as fast as possible could be the key to controlling malaria epidemics, a paper suggests.
One of the biggest problems in insect control is that insecticides lose their efficiency very quickly as the insects mutate. In areas of intense spraying, having resistance is a huge benefit, and fast reproduction means the feature spreads quickly among the population. Today, most pesticides remain in use for just several years before the insects become resistant.
Science magazine reports that a paper by medical entomologist Andrew Read and his colleagues from Pennsylvania State University in University Park, says this can be prevented. The team modelled a situation where mosquitoes are sprayed with a slow poison to kill only old creatures.
By allowing the insects to breed, selective pressure favoring pesticide resistance would be lifted. But as the older mosquitos would still be zapped, they won’t be able to transmit malaria, which they start doing at the ripe old age of 10 to 14 days.
The study suggests the trick would delay the development of resistance by decades and still reduce the number of infectious bites by 95%.
The paper, published in PloS Biology journal, offers a "completely new way of thinking" about the resistance problem, says entomologist Bart Knols of Wageningen University in the Netherlands.
"You might be able to keep insecticides in business for 60, 80 years, perhaps forever," he says.
However, the idea of keeping mosquitoes alive instead of getting rid of them on spot may be difficult to sell to the people, he added.
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