
Drug which makes human blood lethal to mosquitoes can reduce malaria: study - curtis
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/malaria-mosquito-drug-human-blood-poison-stop-ivermectin-trial-colorado-lancet-a8821831.html
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bdamm
The summary article is somewhat vague on the actual result. It seems to imply
that villages were in or out of the control group en-masse but doesn't
explicitly say so:

> For the 18-week study researchers recruited 2,700 people, including 590
> children, across eight villages with half in the treatment group receiving a
> dose of ivermectin every three weeks.

> Regular visits from nurses were used to assess children for malaria symptoms
> and confirmed with a blood test and it found twice as many children in the
> treatment group had no malaria attacks.

> In all there were an average of 2 malaria attacks per child in the treatment
> group compared to 2.49 in the control villages, without any additional
> harmful side effects.

~~~
Someone
[https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736\(18\)32321-3/fulltext)
is a lot clearer:

 _”We invited villages (clusters) in Burkina Faso to participate in a single-
blind (outcomes assessor), parallel-assignment, two-arm, cluster-randomised
trial over the 2015 rainy season. Villages were assigned (1:1) by random draw
to either the intervention group or the control group.”_

I find it interesting how that draw was done:

 _”Randomisation was done at a public event at the Health District offices in
Diebougou, attended by members of the study team, community health workers
from all eight villages, and the local health clinic nurses. In front of the
attendees, the words “treatment” (ie, “intervention”) and “control” were
written on four cards each, which were then sealed in identical opaque
envelopes, mixed in a container, and randomly pulled from the container by
each community health worker representing their village.”_

I guess that helped gain the trust of the participants.

The text also shows how poor Burkina Faso is. Of the 590 children in the 18
week long experiment, they lost 6 because they died.

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k_sze
I haven’t gone to pull numbers from previous studies yet, but this somehow
sounds more convoluted and at the same time less effective than using neutered
mosquitoes to decimate the population.

Do we know whether humans are the only feeding hosts of the mosquitoes? If
not, don’t you need to feed the drug to every other species in the region that
the mosquitoes feed on, in order for this method to be truly effective?

Not dismissing the study, just raising some questions for further discussions.

~~~
mehSoWhut
Well, this idea isn't an extinction level event for mosquitos, but then again,
not everything needs to be conceived as such.

Meanwhile, at least you don't get bit, and when you do, you don't catch as
many diseases, and female mosquitos that bite humans are selected against, on
some small level, albeit probably not enough to produce an evolutionary
outcome unless literally all humans use the drug for centuries on end.

~~~
londons_explore
> female mosquitos that bite humans are selected against

Their lifespan is only 6 weeks, and they might bite 20 people in a lifetime,
so even if only 5% of humans had this treatment, I think it would have a rapid
and major evolutionary response.

------
curtis
One of the techniques used to eradicate malaria in the past was to spray the
interior walls of houses with DDT. After feeding on human hosts who were
infected with malaria, the mosquitoes would land on a nearby wall to digest
the blood. If the wall was covered with DDT, then it would kill the mosquito
before it had a chance to bite another person.[1]

[1] [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2001/07/02/the-
mosquito-k...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2001/07/02/the-mosquito-
killer) (I think, the article is paywalled.)

------
mises
Let's go back to DDT; it worked well. No link to cancer. It is widely
speculated that banning DDT caused more deaths than Hitler.

It wasn't perfect, but western moral imperialism and the corresponding
pressure forced the third world to give up use of a lifesaving pesticide.
Malaria killed more than DDT by far, and it was wrong to jump to conclusions.

~~~
kkarakk
From[0] - The direct DDT exposure toxic effects in humans include
developmental abnormalities [1], reproductive disease [2], neurological
disease [3], and cancer [4]. The exposure DDT metabolite DDE
(dichlorodiphenyldichloroehtane) also promotes abnormal human health effects
such as childhood diabetes and obesity [5].

[0]:[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4124473/#B17](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4124473/#B17)

[1]:[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11463412](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11463412)

[2]:[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14645167](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14645167)

[3]:ATSDR. Agency for Toxic Substances and Diseases Registry (ATSDR)/US Public
Health Service, Toxicological Profile for 4,4’-DDT, 4,4’-DDE, 4, 4’-DDD
(Update) Atlanta, GA: ATSDR; 1994.

[4]:[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10372419](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10372419)

[5]:[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3295349/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3295349/)

