Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Infecting Mosquitoes May Keep Them From Infecting Us
Wolbachia is one of the, if not the most, prolific insect disease, infecting a fifth of all species. One specific Australian strain was found to cut the life of its fruit fly host in half. Scientists have successfully introduced this disease in one mosquito (the mosquito that spreads dengue fever). It does not have any effect on the reproduction of the insects and in fact helps reproduction by killing the eggs of an uninfected female by an infected male. When infected, the mosquito may not live long enough for its dengue passenger to incubate and move on. Hopefully this new biological break through may be the answer to many epidemics spread by insects, including Malaria and Dengue fever.
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3 comments:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=infecting-mosquitoes
This sounds like an immunization for insects, only instead of making them survive, it kills those infected faster so the rest of the population can live uninfected. It is an interesting new approach to keeping populations and diseases under control. I wonder if they have tested to see if there are any downsides to this method, as it seems like infecting mosquitos would increase the resistance of the virus and make in stronger in the future.
If this virus proves to be effective this is a great discovery. Mosquitos are part of the food chain for many animals, but also kill millions of people a year because they host diseases like malaria, yellow fever, and dengue fever. This high-tech approach, combined with the simple mosquito net, could save millions of lives.
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