Blood-sucking mosquitoes will be lured away from populated areas using so-called “sugar traps” in accordance with a new technique being developed by scientists at Cardiff University. A specially-devised cocktail of attractant chemicals will mimic the smell of trees and other plant flowers from which mosquitoes feed before they seek out human blood for reproduction.
Researchers and commercial development partners from the university’s Schools of Chemistry have joined forces with Lisk and Jones Consultants Limited and German industry partners Biogents AG on the project, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The team says an alternative to permethrin-coated nets, which are designed to kill mosquitoes on contact, is necessary as a result of chemical resistance and changes in behaviour of the sub-Saharan mosquito Anopheles gambiae – the species which is the main vector of the malaria pathogen.
Project lead Professor John Pickett, an expert in Biological Chemistry at Cardiff University, said: “Permethrin-treated bed nets have for years offered an incredibly effective way of eliminating mosquitoes and reducing the number of people contracting and dying from malaria in sub-Saharan Africa.
“Unfortunately, research has shown us the mosquitoes have not only begun to develop resistance to the permethrin but, crucially, they have changed their behaviour too.”
Mosquitoes have learned to locate and extract sugar from the region’s sparse flora as part of a survival strategy.
Sugar boosts their energy supplies, enabling them to bite in the daytime and through the chemically coated nets, enabling them to extract the blood needed to lay their eggs.
The Cardiff team therefore took day flying as their focus for intervention, creating a novel sugar formulation.
They also analysed Africa-native and related flowers which attract pollinators such as mosquitoes and are combining such technologies to produce the new mosquito trap.
Professor Pickett, the first to identify mosquito pheromones in the 1980s, added: “Identifying long-range attractants to the relatively sparse flora in sub-Saharan Africa is not a problem with our new techniques.
“But we needed to collaborate with electrophysiologist colleagues at Cardiff to identify the compounds that are selectively used by the malaria mosquitoes to locate sources of floral nectar.”
Researchers will now work together with industry partner Biogents AG to incorporate the new formulation and floral attractants into a durable and sustainably constructed device for community testing with the Kenya Medical Research Institute.
The plan is to place the devices within the range of villages and nearby plant life where they can attract mosquitoes who will feed off the specially formulated sugar and die at a distance before they are able to bite people and lay their eggs.
JUST IN: Nuclear escalation warning after drone strikes ‘bring war to Russia’
Professor Pickett concluded: “Eventually we see the project in the hands of the local communities most affected by malaria in Africa as part of a technology transfer programme.
“They might then, using locally produced sugar, extract the attractants from the native flora in order to destructively bait the mosquitoes and safeguard their own communities from the malaria epidemic we see in the region.”
Malaria kills more than 600,000 people annually, according to World Health Organisation estimates.
