Wolbachia-Infected Mosquitoes Stymie Dengue’s Spread: Study
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S. Williams,
The Scientist,
2021.
Distributing mosquito eggs infected with Wolbachia bacteria led to a dramatic fall in dengue cases and hospitalizations in areas that got the intervention compared with those that didn’t, researchers report today (June 10) in The New England Journal of Medicine. While research on Wolbachia as a potential public health tool for combating dengue dates back more than a decade, this is the first randomized trial of the strategy. “That provides the gold standard of evidence that Wolbachia is a highly effective intervention against dengue,” Oliver Brady, a dengue expert at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who was not involved in the study, tells The Atlantic. “It has the potential to revolutionize mosquito control.” Wolbachia is present in numerous arthropod species, where it manipulates reproduction in its hosts to ensure it becomes widespread in the population. Lab experiments indicated that once in mosquitos, Wolbachia competes for resources with the virus that causes dengue, preventing the virus from taking hold in the host. (This principle also holds with other viruses, such as Zika.) More related to this: Efficacy of Wolbachia-Infected Mosquito Deployments for the Control of Dengue Wolbachia as a possible means of driving genes into populations Wolbachia and cytoplasmic incompatibility in mosquitoes |
