Mosquito trial set to reduce dengue infection in Malaysia

Scientists released sterile male mosquitoes in the Cayman Islands as a new way of controlling the cases of dengue fever.The Oxford-based company Oxitec released the mosquitoes into the wild three times a week in a 40-acre plot of land. Four months into the six-month trial, the mosquito population decreased by 80 percent when compared to a nearby area.

The little sex experiment worked. The scientists used a strain of Aedes aegypti that had been genetically modified to be sterile. So by doing that, the researchers created an interesting reproductive scenario: sterile male and regular male mosquitoes must compete to mate.

Females are the only ones that can transmit diseases though their infectious bite. If the sterile male wins in the mating game, the female would not produce offspring. So by logic, the numbers would decrease.

Oxitec's Chief Scientific Officer, Luke Alphey, said in a statement: "The results from the Cayman trial show that our method works in principle, but with such a small area involved, it would have been difficult to detect a drop in dengue cases. Our estimates suggest that an 80 per cent reduction in mosquitoes should result in fewer dengue infections and we are hopeful that these effects will begin to be seen in the larger Malaysian trial."

GM mosquitoes kind of act like an insecticide (minus the nasty chemicals). And the scientists insist releasing sterile males into the environment won't have lasting effects because the gene won't be passed on from generation to generation.

The Malaysian trial may be the first real world that demonstrate GM mosquitoes can be used to fight off dengue fever, but other researchers are betting on the technique to fight off other diseases caused by these blood sucking creatures. University of Arizona entomologist Michael Riehle is working on genetically modifying mosquitoes to eliminate malaria.

This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com