Researchers at the Pasteur Institute reinforce their monitoring of diseases that are transmitted by mosquitoes such as Zika, dengue, malaria, yellow fever and chikungunia, due to climate warming, removal of forests and civil expansion outside control.
“The temperatures are rising, and the conditions of life are deteriorating. We prepare the appropriate conditions for the development of mosquitoes that adapt to life and coexist with humans,” says the insect scientist, Anna Bella Fayo, who runs the transmitted viruses and insects conveyed at the French Institute.
She explains that her team is working on “the types of mosquitoes that live in cities with humans,” adding, “These species have developed at the beginning in the tropical forests and were absorbing the blood of animals, but today they lay eggs in the city inside plastic buckets that contain water next to the people who stings them.”
80% of the world’s population is currently at risk of developing one or more transmitted diseases that have been for a long time for tropical regions and annually leads to the lives of more than a million people, most of them children, according to the World Health Organization.
Malaria, which is transmitted by a mosquito from the Anoufila family, was the most deadly, with the death of 608,000 people in 2022.
To study this type of mosquito, the Pasteur Institute recently announced that it will invest 90 million euros (about 94 million dollars) to build a “research center on climate and environment infections”, which will be opened in 2028 at the institute’s website in Paris, and it will be conducted in it in safe laboratories.
“This allows us to obtain various types of mosquitoes at the same time and the same place.”
Inside a narrow room in the lower layer, the conditions are ideal for multiplying mosquitoes from around the world (Florida, Gabon, Nigeria, Thailand, Taiwan, New Calidonia …) inside plastic boxes on the shelves, as the heat reaches 28 degrees and the humidity reaches 80%.
Tricks to attract it
Of the 3500 mosquitoes, only 15% bite humans. “The two types that arouse our interest are the Egyptian and the dotted in the white (the tiger mosquito) who live where there is a large human gathering and stagnant water around the houses, as is the case in the poor neighborhoods in Rio.”
Although these two types are responsible for transmitting several diseases to humans, many questions are still without answers.
“Today, the mosquitoes of malaria, the Annawilah Al -Gambia, cannot transport yellow fever viruses, dengue fever, chikungunia and Zika … even though it coexists with the Egyptian paddle that transports these viruses.”
“She lives in the same place and bites people in the same way, so how can only one type of it be transmitted malaria? We seek to find an answer to this question,” she says.
To study the transmission of these viruses, researchers make female mosquitoes – the only one that bites – carries a virus. Firstly, it is “starving 24 hours”, then “a capsule covered with leather – generally in the intestine of the pigs – is generally filled with a mixture of blood and viruses that a female mosquito will come to and bite.”
The researcher says that “the difficulty lies in forcing her to eat, because her appetite is limited, so we have many tricks to attract them: we wear socks with an unpleasant smell, or we adopt carbon dioxide, or the smell of apple. In the dark, so the task is complicated. “
Within 3 years, this research is supposed to allow the status of “maps of risks” caused by the tiger mosquitoes, spread in 80% of French lands, by testing “different groups of mosquitoes with 12 diverse viruses.”
“Today, we do not know if the various regions face the risk of the spread of chickengonia, dengue, or Zika, if a case is coming from abroad,” says Vayo.
It stresses “the necessity of controlling in a directed manner” because mosquitoes have developed resistance to pesticides.