Scientists fight mosquitoes and malaria with "fake blood" technology
As soon as a small vial of red liquid is placed inside the cage, mosquitoes gather around the container filled with fake blood that is harmless to humans and other insects, with which scientists in Sweden are trying to deal a fatal blow to malaria.
This liquid from beet juice was prepared by a team at Stockholm University, with the aim of replacing pesticides harmful to the environment and human health, and to complement progress made in developing a vaccine against malaria, which killed 630,000 people in 2020.
When Noshin Emami, 44, opens the door to a part of her laboratory at Stockholm University that resembles a large refrigerator, an unusual breeding of mosquitoes appears in it.
Cages made of pantyhose contain mosquito colonies, while larvae of these stinging parasites swim in water tanks at a constant temperature of 27 degrees.
"You have to feed her regularly, it's a bit like raising a dog or a cat," the researcher jokes.
Last December, the World Health Organization announced that the number of global malaria infections in 2020 amounted to about 241 million, an increase of 10 percent over the previous year.
Almost all of the 627,000 deaths were recorded in Africa, including a large proportion of children under the age of five, reaching 80 percent.
Malaria not only makes people sick with it, but also attracts mosquitoes to those infected, facilitating transmission of infection by spreading the parasite that causes the disease.
In 2017, Emami and other researchers discovered that this phenomenon is linked to the HMBPP molecule, which is produced when the parasite attacks red blood cells.
"If we add this molecule to any liquid, we will make it very attractive to mosquitoes," the researcher told AFP, noting that combining the molecule with a tiny amount of toxins makes mosquitoes swallow them and die within hours, without the need to use real blood to attract them.
She adds that the goal is also to use lethal compounds that are harmless to health, environmentally friendly and easily obtainable.
Lech Ignatovic, co-founder of Molecular Attractions, the company that developed the product, says the method is more effective and less harmful than the massive amounts of insecticide used to repel mosquitoes, which are often hazardous to the environment or health.
"Pesticides kill all types of insects that they encounter. Even in high-density places such as forests or tropical areas that are full of insects, we determine the types that we want to get rid of instead of spraying pesticides randomly," he says, explaining that it is a specific targeting of certain types of insects.
According to the World Health Organization, the effectiveness of insecticides against mosquitoes is constantly decreasing, with 78 countries reporting cases in which mosquitoes are resistant to at least one of four common types of insecticides, while 29 countries indicated that mosquitoes are resistant to all four types.
The production of the new alternative to pesticides is relatively inexpensive, which makes it a reliable method even in poor regions of the world such as Africa.
Although the Swedish team focused on malaria specifically, its method can also be applied to other diseases transmitted by insects, and we find that among the five types of mosquitoes that were tested, a South American mosquito is responsible for transmitting the Zika virus.
The biggest challenge is the large-scale transfer of technology outside the laboratory.
In this context, Andersch Lindstrom, a researcher specializing in mosquitoes at the Swedish Veterinary Institute, expresses "cautious optimism".
He tells AFP that the problem is always moving to a large scale, considering that the areas that must be covered by this type of traps to be effective are enormous.
However, the researcher believes that the method can be very effective, especially if combined with other techniques.
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