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New study shows how infecting mosquitoes with bacteria could reduce dengue transmission.

Dengue is the most common mosquito borne viral infection in humans, but to date there have been limited options available for its control.

In a paper just published in Science Translational Medicine, Centre Director Neil Ferguson reports research to assess the extent to which infecting mosquitoes with a bacterium called Wolbachia might reduce the ability of those mosquitoes to transmit dengue.  

The work, conducted in collaboration with colleagues from the Oxford University Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Unit in Vietnam and from University of Melbourne, is unusual in combining new experimental and modelling approaches.

The experiments assessed the extent to which Wolbachia were able to prevent Aedes aeypti mosquitoes from being infected with dengue after they were fed on blood collected from dengue patients. One Wolbachia strain (wMelPop) almost completely prevented dengue infection. A second strain (wMel) partially blocked dengue infection.

A mathematical model fitted to the data collected on the wMel strain suggested that wMel could reduce the transmissibility of dengue by 66-75%. This is sufficient to have a major public health impact, eliminating dengue in low and moderate transmission settings.  

The full text is available .