Fungus could replace bed-nets in preventing malaria, researchers

Fungus-impregnated fabric could soon replace chemically-soaked bed-nets as a defence against malaria, researchers claim. As a week-long international malaria conference wrapped up in the Cameroonian capital of Yaounde this weekend, researchers unveiled findings that showed a fungus could be used to kill malaria carrying mosquitoes. Researchers sprayed black fabric with fungi spores which infected and killed mosquitoes in tests in a Tanzanian village. The cloths, hung from the ceilings of villagers’ huts, within six days killed nearly one quarter of the female mosquitoes that carry the deadly disease. “At a 23 percent coverage rate in houses acquiring an infection, the number of infectious bites per person per year would drop from 262 to 64 - that is a reduction of infections of 75 percent,” said Bart Knolls, medical entomologist at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna. Male mosquitoes died of the metarhizium anisopliae fungi even more quickly though only female mosquitoes carry the parasite that causes malaria. “We also found that males can also infect females with the fungi during mating,” said Knolls. According to Knolls, the scientists hit on the idea for using fungi to combat malaria after seeing fungi used in Australia and Niger to kill locusts. The encouraging results will be followed up with further trials in Tanzania and South Africa and a product could be on the market in as little as two years. Health workers, NGOs and governments currently advise people to sleep under impregnated mosquito nets to prevent being bitten by the malaria carrying bugs which come out at dawn and dusk. But the DEET pesticide solution that nets are dipped in is less and less effective in deterring the flying pests, according to scientists who attended the forum. Some 1,500 scientists, health workers and politicians gathered in Yaounde for the fourth annual pan-African malaria conference, organised by the Multilateral Initiative on Malaria, (MIM). Malaria is a mosquito-borne disease that kills 700,000 African children every year, according to the Roll Back Malaria global partnership, which held its own event concurrently with the MIM conference.