Eco-Friendly Mosquito Control Approach: Scientists Develop Technology to Tackle Present, Future Dengue Outbreak

Australian scientists recently showed how bacteria can sterilize and eliminate mosquitoes that carry diseases-the same mosquitoes responsible for the transmission of yellow fever, Zika, and dengue.

A Voice of America report specified that three million male yellow fever mosquitoes also called Aedes aegypti, were released in three sites in Northern Queensland state, during a trial.

These insects were reared at James Cook University in Cairns and sterilized with a naturally occurring bacteria known as Wolbachia.

According to researchers, the bacteria seem to have changed part of the reproductive biology of the insects in order for the female mosquitoes mating them to lay eggs that do not hatch.

ALSO READ: Mosquitos Carrying Dengue, Zika, Yellow Fever Would Be More Prevalent by 2030, Study Warns

Technology Developed

As indicated in the said report, the mosquitoes were released over a period of 20 weeks in 2018. The number of mosquitoes fell successively dropped by more than 80 percent.

When researchers went back the following year and discovered that one of the trial sites had nearly no mosquitoes. Associate professor Nigel Beebe, from the University of Queensland, said he's hoping the sterilization approach will eventually be used in developing nations.

Beebe, also a research scientist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization or SCIRO added, they wanted to show in a developed nation that the technology was vigorous, "we could mass rear mosquitoes."

He also said it is not quite expensive to mass rear mosquitoes, and it is indeed, the separation of the male insects from the females.

Mass Rearing of Mosquitoes

The Australian researchers are planning to use a similar approach to suppress the virus-transmitting Asian Tiger mosquito that has turned established in the Torres Strait in northern Australia.

The associate professor also explained that at present, there's a need to use comparatively technology to do that.

However, he continued, they are currently trying to develop something that's much more vigorous and can be used in tropical countries, not to mention will be comparatively inexpensive to actually have the ability to separate male mosquitoes from females.

Beebe said too, that the mosquitoes' mass rearing is in fact, pretty cheap to do so. Therefore, he thinks there will absolutely have application in developing nations.

Tackling Current and Future Dengue Outbreaks

Scientists elsewhere are in quest of ways to use sterilized male mosquitoes to control the transmission of malaria, although the associate professor has said, it was a difficult or complex challenge.

A similar Ligumin report said, more than 40 percent of people all over the world are suffering from mosquito-borne diseases. In connection to this, the research team is hoping its eco-friendly mosquito control approach will help in tackling present and future outbreaks of dengue, as well as other debilitating diseases.

Mosquito-Borne Diseases

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention describes mosquito-borne diseases as those transmitted by an infected mosquito.

Illnesses that are transferred to people by mosquitoes comprise the West Nile virus, Zika virus, dengue, malaria, and Chikungunya virus.

As the agency suggests, employers or businesses need to protect workers, and workers, in turn, need to protect themselves from mosquito-borne diseases.

Even though people may not fall ill after being bitten by an infected mosquito, some people have a mild short-term disease, or infrequently severe, or long-term disease. Severe cases of these diseases transmitted by mosquitoes can cause death.

Related information about mosquito-borne diseases is shown on the CDC's YouTube video below: