2024-04-11 05:32:00
The health emergency due to the historic outbreak of dengue in Argentina and other countries of Latin America put the scientific community on alert, which is testing methods and alternatives to neutralize what is considered the worst epidemic of this disease in the region. In this framework, scientists from the University of Brasilia carried out innovative research, funded by the World Health Organization (WHO)which proposes use the mosquito itself as a Trojan horse to spread a larvicide which would have the effect of eliminating the larvae from the breeding sites.
The peculiar test was put into practice by the public laboratory Instituto Fiocruz: in a container filled with water, a larvicide-impregnated screen which, although it was not able to eliminate the mosquitoes, it had the expected effect on the larvae in the breeding sites, killing them.
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Brasilia, the town where this experiment was carried out, has the particularity of being the city with the highest rate of infections in the historic epidemic that Brazil is going through this year.
Professor Rodrigo Gurgel, coordinator of the University of Brasilia laboratory that leads this project, explained the details of the study and considered that the findings could provide a vital element in the fight against the dengue outbreak: “Attracted by water and the color black of the container, The insect comes to the station and is contaminated with a larvicide that it spreads everywhere. Who better to find breeding sites than the mosquito itself?“.
Dengue. Photo: NA
In 2020, a team of researchers from the same university participated in a project, also funded by the WHO, to install larvicide stations, complemented by tubes to collect and analyze mosquitoes in 150 homes from one of the most affected neighborhoods in Brasilia. Follow-up was carried out for the following 11 months.
Although the results are still being evaluated, Professor Gurgel surmised that “they will be able to control the mosquito” with the same effectiveness as another study carried out in 2017 in the São Sebastião region, also located in Brasilia, where the presence of mosquitoes was reduced by 66%.
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In turn, the scientist explained that “its advantage over other technologies, such as genetically modified mosquitoes, is that there is no need for large laboratories. Any health service can produce such a bottle at very low cost.”
Thanks to the effectiveness of the method, the Ministry of Health recommended its use in Brazilian municipalities to control the population of the species “Temples of the Egyptians” and was later implemented in cities in five states.
In early April, Brazil recorded a new annual record for dengue deaths, with 1,116 deaths in the first fourteen weeks of the year that exceed the total number of deaths in all of 2023.
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Climate change as a key to understanding the current epidemic
Climate change. Photo: Telam
For Gurgel, the climate change represents one of the most obvious causes of this health emergency.
“The higher the temperature, the faster the mosquitoes develop and the more rain, the more breeding sites. In recent years we saw a clear increase in temperature and a change in precipitation cycles,” observed the specialist.
He also expressed his concern about the lack of control work by the health system throughout the year, as well as the lack of an awareness campaign to alert the population and take extreme care.
According to statistics provided by Professor Rodrigo Gurgel, “75% of breeding sites are located inside homesmeaning that if residents took more care of their homes, many breeding sites would likely be eliminated.”
CA/ED
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