Infecting mosquitos with a harmless bacterium could stop them from spreading dangerous diseases like dengue fever and malaria.
Dengue fever, a disease that’s transmitted by misquitos, infects as many as 100 million people in tropical locations each year and kills up to 25,000. Human vaccination efforts to prevent the disease have been ineffective, but scientists have stumbled on an effective new strategy: vaccinating the mosquitos themselves.
Two new studies found that by injecting a harmless bacterium called Wolbachia into mosquitos in affected regions, scientists could prevent the mosquitos from passing the Dengue fever virus along to their own offspring. The experiment was tested in two suburbs of Cairns in Queensland, Australia, where scientists let 150,000 lab-reared mosquitos free over the course of several months.
While it’s doubtful that residents enjoyed all of the ensuing bug bites, the scientists found that their lab-reared insects were able to pass the dengue fever-preventing bacterium to their wild counterparts. “There was almost complete penetration at these sites,” said Scott O’Neill, dean of science at Monash University in Melbourne and the papers’ co-author.
Researchers hope that in the future, Wolbachia-infected mosquitos can be released in areas that are most afflicted by dengue fever, such as The Philippines. It’s unknown whether vaccinating mosquitos could completely halt the spread of dengue fever, but “at the moment, we are very hopeful,” said another researcher, Ary Hoffman.
What’s more, researchers believe that the treatment could work against many other mosquito-borne illnesses, including malaria and West Nile Virus. Learn more about the innovative treatment here.