Success of Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes in fighting dengue may be underestimated
Success of Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes in fighting dengue may be underestimated
Tags: Aedes, Dengue, WolbachiaB. Wampler, Notre Dame News, 2023.
Now, researchers at the University of Notre Dame have conducted an analysis of the World Mosquito Program’s randomized control trial of Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes in Indonesia, looking at how excluding transmission dynamics impacted the original interpretation of the trial’s results. “Randomized controlled trials are the gold standard for evaluating the efficacy of any medical or public health intervention. That is very difficult for vector interventions against dengue because incidence of the disease can be somewhat unpredictable and sporadic, requiring very large-scale trials,” said Alex Perkins, associate professor of biological sciences at Notre Dame and senior author on the study. The study published in BMJ Global Health used mathematical models to analyze dengue virus transmission during the Indonesia trial. They explored three biases, or sources of potential error, that the trial is subject to: human movement, mosquito movement and the combined transmission dynamics between human and mosquito movement.
