We’ve got trouble, maybe. A new subgroup mosquito species has been discovered in Burkina Faso that is a particularly welcoming host to the parasite that is the leading cause of malaria in Africa. If you remember, American actor George Clooney was diagnosed with malaria in January during a visit to Sudan.
Science magazine reports that this new bug is a subgroup of Anopheles gambiae, and until now because it has been spending most of its time in remote locations away from humans, until now. They have shown up in puddles and ponds near villages in the past four months. When they examined these insects in the lab, they found many to be genetically distinct from any A. gambiae insects previously recorded.
According to the BBC, Dr. Ken Vernick, a member of a team from the Pasteur Institute in Paris, France cautions not to get too up in arms:
“We are in a zone where we need to do some footwork in the field to identify a means to capture the wild adults of the outdoor-resting sub-group. Then we can test them and measure their level of infection with malaria, and then we can put a number on how much, if any, of the actual malaria transmission this outdoor-resting subgroup is responsible for.”
After biting, mosquitoes need to rest up and if they do this inside dwellings, the confined area will make them an easier target for trapping. However, the method is also likely to introduce a bias into the populations under study.
The malaria parasite requires specific human and mosquito tissues to complete its life cycle. Once inside a human, the parasite develops and multiplies, causing periodic bouts of flu-like symptoms, including fever, headache, and chills. The developing parasites destroy red blood cells, which may cause death by severe anemia as well as by the clogging of capillaries that supply the brain or other vital organs with blood.
Currently, the deadliest of the four species of the parasite is Plasmodium falciparum, a species most likely to be transmitted by the mosquito Anopheles gambiae.
Dr. Gareth Lycett, a malaria researcher from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in the UK continues:
“To control malaria in an area you need to know what mosquitoes are passing on the disease in that district, and to do that you need sampling methods that record all significant disease vectors. You need to determine what they feed on, when and where, and whether they are infectious. And where non-house-resting mosquitoes are contributing to disease transmission, devise effective control methods that will complement bed-net usage and house spraying. A recent 12m-euro multinational project (AvecNET), funded by the European Union, and led by the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine has the specific aims of doing just this.”
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are more than 200 million cases of malaria worldwide each year, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths, most of them in Africa. Tropical regions are affected most, however malaria’s furthest extent reaches into some temperate zones with extreme seasonal changes. The disease has been associated with major negative economic effects on regions where it is widespread.
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Written By Sy Kraft, B.A.