Adding liquid soap can boost the potency of some of the pesticides used on malaria-carrying mosquitoes. The discovery is detailed in a study published November 17 in the journal PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases and offers a tool in the fight against the disease.
[Related: New four-dose malaria vaccine is up to 80 percent effective.]
Malaria is most prevalent in Asia, Latin America, and sub-Saharan Africa and is caused by several species of parasites that are transmitted by the bites of infected female Anopheles mosquitoes. It causes severe fatigue, fever, headaches, and chills and can be fatal. When it is treated with the right medication, such as artemether-lumefantrine, it can be cured and the malaria parasites can be completely cleared from the body. The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that there were 241 million cases of malaria worldwide and 627,000 deaths in 2020.
While the first malaria vaccines were approved and recommended in 2021, the mosquitoes that carry malaria are becoming more resistant to insecticides.
“Over the past two decades, mosquitoes have become strongly resistant to most insecticides,” study co-author and University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) evolutionary biologist Colince Kamdem said in a statement. “It’s a race now to develop alternative compounds with new modes of action.”
Before coming to UTEP, Kamdem worked at Cameroon’s Centre for Research in Infectious Diseases, where he first saw soap’s potential potency during some routine insecticide testing. A special class of insecticide called neonicotinoids have shown to be a potential alternative that targets the mosquito populations that show resistance to current insecticides. However, they can have negative effects on bees if not used carefully and neonicotinoids do not kill some mosquito species unless their potency is boosted.
World Health Organization protocols recommend adding a seed-oil based…
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