Dear MEL Topic Readers,
Scientists propose novel way of treating mosquitoes for malaria
Malaria is a life-threatening disease spread to humans by some
types of mosquitoes, which are still common in tropical and subtropical
countries. People who have malaria usually feel very sick with a high fever and
shaking chills, and in severe cases, it can cause jaundice, seizures, coma, or
death. In fact, as many as 600,000 people die of malaria each year, mostly in
Africa. The infection does not spread from person to person, but is caused by a
parasite, which is carried by some type of mosquito. Human malaria infection is
initiated when a female anopheline mosquito injects Plasmodium sporozoites into
the skin during a blood meal. To prevent malaria, you should reduce contact
with mosquitoes by wearing protective clothing, using window screens, and
sleeping under a bednet. You can also use insecticide to kill mosquitoes, but
they’ve become resistant to it. Now, researchers at Harvard University have come
up with a new way to prevent malaria by using drugs that kill parasites in
mosquitoes instead of mosquitoes themselves. In their test, the drug applied onto
bednets didn’t kill all mosquitoes, but killed all the parasites. After all, it
is the parasites that spread malaria, not mosquitoes themselves. More research
is still needed, but the effectiveness of bednets against malaria infection might
improve significantly.
Read the article and learn how the spread of malaria could be
prevented.
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