Malaria and Mosquito Resistance to Insecticides: Challenges and Possible Solutions.
After the bedeviled episode of malaria, thanks to intravenous anti-malaria injections, I am perfectly fine. I wrote about my experience in my last post and while I was in that bed, I was thinking a lot, and I stumbled on the thought of having a malaria-free country just like the United state. I wrote about how the United state became a malaria-free country in the same post.
Yesterday, I decided to protect myself from the blood-sucking, parasite-transmitting insects called mosquitoes, so I decided to use insecticide as an option. I ensured that all windows and doors were closed but to my greatest surprise, I had a horrible night with little to no rest. It looked like the mosquitoes went to hide somewhere for the insecticide to exhaust its effect before coming back to me. It seemed like the bites were more intense this time. I was talking to someone this morning, and she said the same thing is happening with her mosquito net, where mosquitoes do not die, rather they penetrate through the net or from below. So what could be happening?
You see, humans aren't changing. We haven't evolved in a long time and this is because there is nothing threatening our existence at least currently. So we do not have a reason to start developing protective mechanisms as a result of mutation but then it looks like mosquitoes are starting to resist insecticides. Insecticides are made of chemicals such as pyrethroids, but then these chemicals aren't functioning on mosquitoes as they did in the past.
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In that light, I decided to do some findings and while doing it, I found that according to the World Health Organization, resistance is said to be, when mosquito populations of more than 2% survive exposure to chemicals. While checking, a lot of research has shown that mosquitoes are now resistant to these chemicals. Mosquito uses the enzyme of the family cytochromes to detoxify toxins, and when it comes to insecticide, the group Cytochrome P450 (P450s) monooxygenases is responsible. While doing my findings, I came across a study where a synthetic insecticide Actellic still remains effective showing good performances but having a short-lasting efficacy.
While reading, I also came to understand that insecticide changing will help prevent the resistance that these mosquitoes have come to have. If you have heard of crop rotation where different crops are planted per season so the earth do not lose its nutrient, that's just how we will do it with the insecticides but this time, we will be changing the insecticides on a regular to prevent the mosquitoes from gaining resistance. Another method would be the use of Piperonyl butoxide (PBO) which is not an insecticide, so do not start thinking that you have a new insecticide at your doorstep (I mean for those who still have malaria in their countries). It is actually used with insecticides to prevent Cytochrome P450 (P450s) monooxygenases from functioning.
While malaria elimination worldwide is still far from becoming a reality, staying safe from malaria is something that should be a priority for people like myself who stay in regions where malaria is still dominant, infecting millions of people annually. Someone would ask why I say eradication of malaria from the world is far from near. It is evident that even Bill Gates who has been fronting technologies to eradicate this parasite confirmed that it is nowhere near the goal but lots of progress have been made in the last 2 decades.
Hopefully, the research done to eliminate malaria would become successful and we can be done with this blood-sucking, malaria parasite-infecting insect, that gives us the parasites that destroy both our liver cells and our red blood cells but until we start to see vaccines that would be used, or sugar bait traps for killing mosquitoes, or gene drive which would help to reduce the population of the mosquito, using Piperonyl butoxide (PBO) in combination with insecticides, as well as changing insecticides regularly will be the current resort.
Read More
https://malariajournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12936-015-0807-z
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0196410
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4193182/
https://parasitesandvectors.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13071-018-2923-4
https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/223/Supplement_2/S81/6255910
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096517481530062X?via%3Dihub
https://parasitesandvectors.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1756-3305-7-256
https://parasitesandvectors.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13071-019-3865-1
http://npic.orst.edu/factsheets/pbogen.html
https://malariajournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12936-022-04041-9