Fighting dengue with family planning for mosquitoes

The scourge of dengue fever might be cut by neutering the mosquitoes that carry it. Call it family planning. Males are genetically engineered so that when they mate with females, their offspring never surpass the larval stage of development.

While the idea is nothing new, it is the first time such an approach is being used to develop male-sterile Aedes aegypti, the type of mosquito that carries yellow fever, chikungunya and dengue fever.

The World Health Organizations (WHO) estimates that approximately two-fifths of the world's population - 2.5 billion people - are now at risk from the dengue virus, primarily in South Asia and Latin America.

But recent reports show that the tropical disease has increased 30-fold over the past 50 years, especially as temperatures warm in typically cool regions, such as in North America.

In an attempt to address what is already an endemic in some parts of the world, a team of researchers at Oxitec, based in Oxford, the United Kingdom, has created a Genetically Modified (GM) A. aegypti mosquito designed to compete with wild-type mosquitoes. If all goes well, the GM version will eventually lead to a reduction in dengue-carrying mosquitoes.

Controlled testing has already begun in Malaysia and, pending regulatory approval, authorities are expected to release the organisms into the wild.

But not everyone is buzzing with excitement. A concerned group of citizens in the South Asian country fear they are being subjected to an experiment where all the risks are not immediately apparent.

The first open-field testing of GM mosquitoes has many fearing that Oxitec and the Malaysian Government will lose control over its creation, creating a Frankenstein-mosquito.

Oxitec's head of business development Ann Kramer told Xinhua in a recent interview by phone that, unlike other GM mosquitoes being developed by academic groups, Oxitec's mosquito will be unable to spread its genetically altered traits throughout the environment.

"With our approach, they will be released, they will die, and their progeny will die so there will always be the ability to take it at a speed we control," she said from her office in Oxford. "We can decide, rather than run the risk of things going faster than we had perhaps planned."

The Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) that Oxitec employs has been around for decades. In the United States and Mexico, authorities used the method to eliminate the New World screw-worm by about 1985. And in China, there could be future possibilities for the technique. Kramer said the Ministry of Agriculture has contacted Oxitec about using their approach to combat the Oriental fruit fly, which is threatening China's citrus agriculture. But up until recently, the SIT seemed doomed to fail in A. aegypti mosquitoes because, in part, the radiation for sterilization is extremely damaging. To address the issue, Oxitec has developed a sterile male version which does not need to be irradiated and produces late-acting lethality in its larvae.

"In the past, that has not been possible," said Kramer, noting that the Indian Government has also begun testing the Oxitec technology in labs in Chennai.

A New York-based nonprofit environmental group reported that two types of mosquitoes capable of transmitting the virus - the predominantly urban species A.aegypti and the Asian tiger mosquito - have been found in 28 U.S. states and may travel further around the country as temperatures rise. Climate change could push the traditionally tropical disease into the far corners of the United States, where dengue-carrying mosquitoes have typically been rare.

According to the WHO, cases of dengue have reached unusually high rates in the past four years, with 50 million infections worldwide every year.

Sometimes, dengue infections lead to hemorrhagic fever, a potentially lethal complication that has become a leading cause of hospitalization and death among children in Asia, according to the WHO.

Marked by the severe onset of a fever of 103 to 105F, or around 40C, victims suffer from pain behind the eyes, muscle and joint pains, skin rash, diarrhea and vomiting. With no cure or vaccine in sight, the WHO has stated that the only way to prevent virus transmission is to attack the mosquitoes themselves.

Researchers are primarily interested in whether the GM mosquito is able to compete with local males to win the female over and impregnate her with the never-to-be-born offspring.

Currently, the Malaysian Government spends 130 million U.S. dollars a year on trying to control mosquitoes and on tending to those infected with the dengue virus, according to Kramer, who cited a report to be released shortly.

Going after A. aegypti is the best approach to a quickly- spreading disease, said Kramer. Insecticides only kill the mosquitoes present at that very moment and many people do not want insecticide sprayed in their homes.

United Nations, Xinhua