The first factory of modified anti-dengue mosquitoes will be born in Brazil – breaking latest news

The ambitious goal: to build a mosquito factory modified in Brazil to protect the country from dengue disease (and others). The project was christened operation Wolbachia
and was created by the World Mosquito Program (Wmp), a non-profit organization whose purpose is to combat diseases transmitted by mosquitoes (Zika, chikungunya, yellow fever and of course Dengue).

The Wolbachia bacterium

Wolbachia the name of a bacterium that severely limits the ability of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes to transmit the virus what causes dengue: the bacterium and the virus in fact they cannot coexist in the same host organism. When the modified mosquitoes are released into Aedes aegypti infested areas they slowly spread the bacteria to the wild mosquito population. The Brazilian project plans to release modified mosquitoes in urban areas of Brazil over the next 10 years.

Studies on modified mosquitoes

The largest study of the new technology, done in Indonesia, has shown that the technology could reduce the incidence of dengue by 77%. In Brazil, where the modified mosquitoes have so far been tested in five cities, the results have been more modest. In Niteri, the intervention was associated with a 69% decrease of dengue cases. In Rio de Janeiro the reduction was 38%. However, it should be specified that these latest studies, for various reasons (including the use of different methods) are not considered as reliable by epidemiologists as the Indonesian one. Instead, more consistent data are expected from a large randomized controlled trial underway in Belo Horizonte which aims to compare the incidence of dengue in areas where mosquitoes modified with the Wolbachia bacterium are released with that of other areas not affected by the experimentation.

A production of 5 billion mosquitoes a year

It has not yet been decided where the mosquito factory will be built in Brazil but the facility is expected to start operating in 2024 and will produce up to five billion mosquitoes a year. Insects could be spread in the environment with drones, but also more simply with cars or bicycles. This will be the largest plant in the world to produce Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes, says Scott O’Neill, a microbiologist at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and head of the WMP. And it will allow us to cover more people in a short period of time than in any other country. Indeed, Brazil has one of the highest dengue infection rates in the world, with over two million cases reported in 2022. The WMP scientists themselves underline that the Wolbachia plan is not an alternative to other public health intervention strategies such as vaccines, disinfestations, mosquito nets, but represents a complementary weapon to control dengue, Zika and chikungunya.