Mosquito season is just beginning, but in the future we may have less to worry about, as chemical and cosmetics company Kao has unveiled a new chemical solution to combat mosquitoes.
During the Asia Dengue Summit in Bangkok last week, Kao presented its research results on a mechanism to prevent mosquitoes from flying. The findings of the research could be important given the increasing risk of mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue fever, malaria and Zika.
The original study, published in February, was a joint project between Kao’s Personal Health Care Products Research Laboratory and the Laboratory for Circuit Mechanisms of Sensory Perception belonging to the Riken research institute.
Researchers found that spraying a surfactant solution on mosquitoes, which usually repel water, allows their wings to become wet, preventing them from flying and knocking them out of the air. Surfactants are the main components of detergent.
Mosquitoes rely on their ability to flap their wings at high speed — faster than other flying insects — and therefore having wet wings is detrimental. Once the surfactant solution is sprayed onto their wings, they are unable to keep flying, causing them to drop to the ground.
The same research also found that a solution with a low surface tension is able to block the mosquito’s spiracles — small openings on their bodies that take in oxygen. By effectively obstructing them, the solution is able to kill the mosquitoes.
Mosquitoes transmit vector-borne diseases — illnesses caused by parasites, viruses and bacteria that are often transmitted by bloodsucking insects — that are frequently deadly. According to the World Health Organization, more than 700,000 people worldwide die from vector-borne diseases each year.
With towns and cities encroaching on places that mosquitoes can inhabit and global warming extending the period and areas in which they can survive, finding a means to control them is pivotal to protecting a great number of people.
Traditional insecticides are potentially harmful to biodiversity, and recent studies have also found that some mosquitoes are resistant to them.
“As of now, we have not decided on any specifics of (the solution's) release as a commercial product, but we do hope to eventually release it to the public in a way that it can be used,” said Yoshiko Goto, a public relations official at Kao.
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