• HOME
  • NEWS
    • BIOENGINEERING
    • SCIENCE NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • FORUM
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • CONTACT US
Tuesday, March 9, 2021
BIOENGINEER.ORG
No Result
View All Result
  • Login
  • HOME
  • NEWS
    • BIOENGINEERING
    • SCIENCE NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • FORUM
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • CONTACT US
  • HOME
  • NEWS
    • BIOENGINEERING
    • SCIENCE NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • FORUM
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • CONTACT US
No Result
View All Result
Bioengineer.org
No Result
View All Result
Home NEWS Science News Immunology

Salt-based mosquito-control products are ineffective, study shows

Bioengineer by Bioengineer
October 20, 2020
in Immunology
0
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on LinkedinShare on RedditShare on Telegram

Researchers find no evidence that salt-water ingestion kills mosquitoes

IMAGE

Credit: Joseph Berger, Bugwood.org

Annapolis, MD; October 20, 2020–A new study by a bevy of expert mosquito researchers offers an important warning to consumers: Products claiming to reduce mosquito populations with salt-water solutions are simply ineffective.

In a series of lab tests conducted in five locations using nine species of mosquito, researchers found no evidence that adult mosquitoes are killed by salt ingested at concentrations used in several popular mosquito-control products. The findings are presented in a new publication released today in the Journal of Medical Entomology.

Salt-based mosquito-control products have caught researchers’ attention in recent years for their bold claims of killing mosquitoes via salt ingestion. The products often contain some combination of dried salt, sugar, and yeast, which is mixed with warm water by the purchaser and then placed outdoors to attract mosquitoes that then drink the fluid.

Donald Yee, Ph.D., BCE, professor at the University of Southern Mississippi’s School of Biological, Environmental, and Earth Sciences, coordinated the study among nine researchers at several universities and public mosquito-control agencies both in the United States and Australia. They used nine mosquito species in their experiment, all from the genera Aedes, Anopheles, and Culex, which collectively are responsible for the vast majority of mosquito-borne disease (such as malaria, dengue, yellow fever, and West Nile virus).

“There is a real public-health threat from mosquito-borne disease, and having unsubstantiated claims out there may have real consequences for the health of people in areas plagued by mosquitoes,” Yee says.

Yee and colleagues conducted feeding trials in which caged mosquitoes were offered one of four diets: water only, salt water only, sugar water only, or a sugar-and-salt water mixture. The concentrations in the diets–1.03 percent salt and 8 percent sugar–were based on the product description of the most widely available salt-based mosquito-control device on the market. The trials ran for seven days, and the researchers recorded the number of dead mosquitoes each day.

Across the trials, virtually no negative effects of salt ingestion on mosquitoes were observed. Mosquitoes fed sugar water with or without salt survived at high rates throughout the experiment, with few exceptions. Mosquitoes fed water only or salt water only, meanwhile, fared worse, but also at similar rates. Yee says the results were clear and compelling.

“The consistency in the findings was a bit of a surprise given that nature is messy,” he says. “We’d expect there to be a lot of variation in responses to the diets we offered, but, broadly speaking, adding salt to plain water or sugar water didn’t lead to increased mosquito death. Adults mosquitoes just don’t die faster because they drink salt water.”

The findings align with broad scientific understanding of mosquito biology. “It makes a lot of sense scientifically that mosquitoes can deal with low concentrations of salt, given that all vertebrate blood has a similar amount of salt in it,” Yee says. “If mosquitoes could not deal with salt, then they likely would have evolved away from blood feeding millions of years ago.”

In fact, the leading salt-based mosquito-control product uses a salt concentration (1.03 percent) that is only slightly higher than that found in human blood (0.9 percent).

The researchers say they want to provide consumers with the knowledge they need to spend their money wisely and protect their health. Using mosquito-control products with unsubstantiated claims could lead to a false sense of security. Instead, they recommend practices and products that have been repeatedly proven to reduce risk of exposure to mosquito-borne disease: dumping standing water in yards (e.g., in bird baths, flower pots, tires, toys) to eliminate locations for mosquitoes to lay their eggs, treating standing water with insecticides that kill mosquito larvae, wearing long sleeves and pants when outdoors, avoiding going outside when mosquitoes are most active (dusk and dawn), and using repellent sprays with DEET or other EPA-approved chemicals.

Yee also recommends members of the public turn to their local mosquito-control agencies for trustworthy guidance. “Most mosquito-control districts and mosquito-control organizations have recommendations for what does and what does not work, so you can avoid products with unsubstantiated claims,” he says. “As always, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

###

“No Evidence That Salt Water Ingestion Kills Adult Mosquitoes (Diptera: Culicidae)” will be published online on October 20, 2020, in the Journal of Medical Entomology. Journalists may request advance copies of the article via the contact below or download the published paper after 10 a.m. October 20, 2020, at https://academic.oup.com/jme/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jme/tjaa214/5921702.

CONTACT: Joe Rominiecki, [email protected], 301-731-4535 x3009

ABOUT: ESA is the largest organization in the world serving the professional and scientific needs of entomologists and people in related disciplines. Founded in 1889, ESA today has more than 7,000 members affiliated with educational institutions, health agencies, private industry, and government. Headquartered in Annapolis, Maryland, the Society stands ready as a non-partisan scientific and educational resource for all insect-related topics. For more information, visit http://www.entsoc.org.

The Journal of Medical Entomology publishes research related to all aspects of medical entomology and medical acarology, including the systematics and biology of insects, acarines, and other arthropods of public health and veterinary significance. For more information, visit https://academic.oup.com/jme, or visit http://www.insectscience.org to view the full portfolio of ESA journals and publications.

Media Contact
Joe Rominiecki
[email protected]

Related Journal Article

http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jme/tjaa214

Tags: Ecology/EnvironmentEntomologyInfectious/Emerging DiseasesMedicine/HealthPublic Health
Share12Tweet8Share2ShareShareShare2

Related Posts

IMAGE

Time needed to sequence key molecules could be reduced from years to minutes

March 8, 2021
IMAGE

Monoclonal antibody “cocktail” blocks COVID-19 variants: Study

March 5, 2021

Int’l Women’s Day: Fathima Wakeel to present at Women in Data Science Conference

March 4, 2021

A new strategy for pooling COVID-19 tests to detect outbreaks early

March 4, 2021

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

POPULAR NEWS

  • IMAGE

    Terahertz accelerates beyond 5G towards 6G

    703 shares
    Share 281 Tweet 176
  • People living with HIV face premature heart disease and barriers to care

    86 shares
    Share 34 Tweet 22
  • HIV: an innovative therapeutic breakthrough to optimize the immune system

    36 shares
    Share 14 Tweet 9
  • Global analysis suggests COVID-19 is seasonal

    39 shares
    Share 16 Tweet 10

About

We bring you the latest biotechnology news from best research centers and universities around the world. Check our website.

Follow us

Tags

Chemistry/Physics/Materials SciencesInfectious/Emerging DiseasesGeneticsTechnology/Engineering/Computer SciencecancerPublic HealthMedicine/HealthEcology/EnvironmentBiologyCell BiologyMaterialsClimate Change

Recent Posts

  • Research pinpoints unique drug target in antibiotic resistant bacteria
  • How fast is the universe expanding? Galaxies provide one answer.
  • Young white-tailed deer that disperse survive the same as those that stay home
  • Complement inhibition reverses mental losses in preclinical traumatic brain injury models
  • Contact Us

© 2019 Bioengineer.org - Biotechnology news by Science Magazine - Scienmag.

No Result
View All Result
  • Homepages
    • Home Page 1
    • Home Page 2
  • News
  • National
  • Business
  • Health
  • Lifestyle
  • Science

© 2019 Bioengineer.org - Biotechnology news by Science Magazine - Scienmag.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Create New Account!

Fill the forms below to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In