Malaysia Wolbachia trials: Battling dengue and other mosquito-borne viruses
Malaysia Wolbachia trials: Battling dengue and other mosquito-borne viruses
Tags: Aedes, Dengue, Genetic biocontrol, Population modification/replacement, Wolbachia2019.
An international team of scientists have reported an effective and environmentally sustainable way to block the transmission of mosquito-borne dengue virus, in trials carried out in Malaysia. The breakthrough has major implications for countries with hot climates such as island nations in the South Pacific to Saudi Arabia, Africa and South America, all of which experience dengue, Zika, yellow fever and chikungunya. Using a strain of the bacteria Wolbachia, which inhibit mosquitoes from transmitting viruses to humans, researchers at the Universities of Melbourne and Glasgow and the Institute for Medical Research in Malaysia were able to successfully reduce cases of dengue at sites in Kuala Lumpur. Their data, published today in Current Biology, shows that mosquitoes carrying the wAlbB strain of Wolbachia, when released into the wild, had the effect of reducing the incidence of dengue cases by 40 per cent.
