2023-08-08 01:58:38
Updated Tuesday, August 8, 2023 – 01:58
The high temperatures that are expected due to climate change could undermine some control strategies
The Puerto Rico Vector Control Unit is working with the Comunidades Organizadas para Prevenir Arboviruses (COPA) project in Ponce, Puerto Rico, to determine if mosquitoes with Wolbachia reduce the number of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which transmit dengue, chikungua, and Zika. CDC Public Health Mosquito Alert: science and citizens united for global health Nurse Saturated Why we suffer from mosquito bites before the arrival of summer
The control of mosquito-borne diseases may enter an uncertain scenario in the coming years due to climate change. Pathologies such as malaria, dengue and the Zika virus, which already affect millions of people, can expand their radius of action, spurred on by high temperatures, which not only contribute to expanding the spread of transmission vectorsbut also hinder some of the strategies designed for its control.
One of the technologies that have been developed to try to stop the spread of these emerging diseases is to use the bacteria Wolbachia pipiens, which blocks the infection and transmission of various pathogens. So far multiple strains of Wolbachia bacteria have already been transferred to various species of Aedes mosquitoes and have been tested in Latin America, Asia and Oceania, mainly with the wMel strain of bacteria. However, the shield provided by wMel can lose its effectiveness due to heat stress, as demonstrated by a group of researchers from the University of California. The work published by Nature Climate Change suggests that, in the short term, the increasingly frequent scenarios of high heat waves could reduce the effectiveness of wMel.
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Everything you need to know about mosquitoes and their repellents
Writing: NURSE SATURATED Everything you need to know about mosquitoes and their repellents
Why a bacterium to stop mosquitoes? From the US national public health agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it is explained that Wolbachia is a common type of bacteria found in insects. About six in 10 of all types of insects in the world, such as bees, beetles, and butterflies carry this pathogen naturally.
The advantage that the researchers found in the bacterium is that it cannot cause disease in other living beings. In the US, the use of Wolbachia mosquitoes is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Prior to the release of mosquitoes with the bacteria into an area, EPA must grant a permission for experimental use (EUP, for its acronym in English).
In Europe, this natural biocide is also used to combat the risks of the settlement of disease-transmitting mosquitoes. An example in Spain is collected by the Spanish Journal of Public Health, in a recent issue. Here we detail the presence of Aedes albopictus, with a high health and social impact, detected in Valencia in 2015, and the use of hinnovative tools for its control include the use of the endosymbiotic bacterium Wolbachia pipientis.
In the work that is now published in the group’s journal Nature, Vleri Vásquez and his colleagues from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science have integrated data on how temperature affects wMel in a dynamic environment into a mosquito population dynamics model. laboratory tests along with projections of the severity of future heat waves in different scenarios. For this they have chosen Cairns, Australia and the city of Nha Trang, in Vietnam, where successful field tests on the use of this biocide had been carried out. In both locations, they carried out intervention simulations using climate projections from Phase 5 of the Coupled Models Intercomparison Project and historical temperature records from those areas.
The result of the analysis showed that, although the technology is robust in the face of climate change projected in the short term (2030), the future is less rosy and there is a potential technology vulnerability wMel under the high variability of temperature and climate change that is expected in the coming decades. The authors project that heat waves in the 2050s may last longer (an average of 24 days), which has a negative effect on wMel. In any case, the researcher indicates that more studies are needed to accurately delimit the wMel thresholds.
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