In a two-year-long citywide experiment in Singapore, researchers divided urban neighborhoods into clusters, releasing sterile, Wolbachia-infected Aedes aegypti male mosquitoes in some areas while leaving others untreated to test whether this biological approach could reduce disease transmission in a densely populated city.
The mosquito releases proved to be quite effective. In areas where the intervention was used, mosquito numbers fell sharply, and the people living in treated neighborhoods were about 70% less likely to develop symptomatic dengue after a few months of exposure. The findings are published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
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Over the past few years, scientists have discovered that infecting Aedes aegypti mosquitoes with Wolbachia bacteria can be a powerful alternative to traditional dengue control methods. Wolbachia prevents the dengue virus from replicating inside these mosquitoes, making them far less capable of spreading the disease.
Project Wolbachia works by releasing male Aedes mosquitoes that carry Wolbachia. Although male mosquitoes do not bite humans, they play an important role in reducing the population of biting mosquitoes that transmit dengue.
When these infected males are released to mate with wild female mosquitoes that do not carry Wolbachia, the eggs they produce do not hatch. Over time, repeated releases result in fewer mosquitoes surviving in the city. This specific strategy is known as the Wolbachia-mediated incompatible insect technique–sterile insect technique (IIT-SIT).
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