Dengue is a very painful illness spread by mosquitoes. In severe cases, dengue can even be deadly. Dengue is a serious disease affecting people in around 120 countries. It can cause high fevers, headaches, and severe pain. It's caused by a virus spread by bites from mosquitoes. Therefore, dengue is more common in warm areas. Every year, roughly 390 million people get dengue, and as many as 25,000 die from it.
Now scientists seem to have found a way to protect humans from dengue by first protecting mosquitoes. Dengue fever is caused by a virus. Though it may seem strange to think of it this way, the mosquitoes that spread the dengue virus are also infected with it. But the virus doesn't seem to hurt the mosquitoes.
Wolbachia is a kind of bacteria commonly found in many insects. In some insects, Wolbachia can keep some viruses from duplicating themselves, which is how viruses grow inside a body. Wolbachia isn't naturally found in mosquitoes. But by infecting these mosquitoes with Wolbachia, scientists can keep the mosquitoes from catching the dengue virus. Even better, the young mosquitoes coming from the eggs of the infected mosquitoes also carry Wolbachia.
Researchers working with the World Mosquito Program (WMP) ran a 27-month study in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. They split a 10-square-mile area up into 24 smaller areas. In half of the areas, the scientists did nothing. In the other half, they set out containers of eggs from mosquitoes that had Wolbachia. They did this every two weeks for just 4 to 6 months.
Ten months later, 80% of the mosquitoes in the treated areas carried Wolbachia. The researchers report the number of dengue cases in the treated areas was reduced by 77% and that the number of people needing hospital care for dengue dropped by 86%.
Because the results of the experiment were so good, the WHO has placed Wolbachia-infected mosquito eggs in all parts of Yogyakarta and surrounding areas. The WHO says that within a year, their efforts will protect 2. 5 million people against dengue and that their efforts will be turned into a program that can be repeated worldwide.
