This study highlights that airborne pyrethroids and DDT affect a range of anopheline mosquito behaviours that are important parameters in malaria transmission, namely deterrence, irritancy/excito-repellency and blood-feeding inhibition.
In this study, the genetic basis of pyrethroid resistance in a selected laboratory strain of An. arabiensis from South Africa was investigated using a custom-made microarray, known as the An. gambiae detoxification chip.
In bioassays where sufficient contact with treated surfaces is assured, LLINs and IRS kill high proportions of susceptible An. arabiensis mosquitoes, though these efficacies decay gradually for LLINs and rapidly for IRS.
Whenever I teach on the history of malaria, I talk about the different time periods when certain ideas were fashionable and implemented, and then disappeared, and sometimes came back much later.
Take the 'chloroquine era'. Discovered by Bayer scientists in the early 1930s and saved millions of lives around the globe, followed by resistance popping up in SE Asia and Colombia in the late 1950s. Resistance spreading to Africa in the late 1970s, and its use now largely reduced. End of the 'chloroquine era'.
The following Guest editorial was provided by Richard Tren, Kimberly Hess, and Donald Roberts.
Progress is being made against malaria. As reported by the World Health Organization (WHO), malaria cases have declined by more than 50% between 2000 and 2010, and malaria-specific mortality has declined by 26% [1]. These gains are mainly due to the use of insecticides to control disease-spreading insects (vector control) through insecticide-treated bednets and indoor residual spraying (IRS). Despite the importance of public health insecticides in vector control, there is very little appreciation and understanding of how insecticides actually work in disease prevention.
On November 12, an encounter on “DDT controversy in the face of safe and effective malaria vector control” was held in Geneva, organized by Media 21 and hosted by Biovision, icipe and the Millennium Institute with the support of the Secretariat of the Stockholm Convention. This blog summarizes the most important arguments and statements made by the panellists and the audience regarding the use of DDT in malaria vector control.
