Can soap help fight mosquitoes that spread malaria?

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New York. According to a research, the solution to the decades-long fight against malaria can be found in soap.

Scientists at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) found that a small amount of liquid soap can increase the potency of some classes of pesticides by more than tenfold.

“This discovery is promising news as mosquitoes that spread malaria appear to have increasing resistance to current insecticides,” said lead author Collins Kamdem, assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at UTEP.

“Over the past two decades, mosquitoes have become resistant to most insecticides,” Kamdem said.

“The race is now on to develop alternative mixtures with new modes of action.”

“Both laboratory tests and field trials have shown that neonicotinoids, a particular class of insecticides, are a promising option for target populations showing resistance to existing insecticides,” said Caroline Fouette, research assistant professor at UTEP.

However, neonicotinoids cannot kill some species of mosquitoes unless their potency is increased.

In this case, Fouat said that soap is a potency enhancer.

Malaria is a devastating mosquito-borne disease prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Latin America, causing fever, fatigue, headaches, and chills. This disease can be fatal.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, there were an estimated 241 million cases of malaria worldwide in 2020, resulting in 627,000 deaths.

In a new study published Friday in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, the team selected three low-cost linseed oil-based soaps that are prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa.

In all cases, pesticides significantly increased efficacy, the team wrote in the study.

“All three brands of soap increase the mortality rate by 30 percent to 100 percent compared to using pesticides,” said Ashou Fred, first author and doctoral student at the University of Yaoundé in Cameroon.

The team also tested mixing the soap with a class of pesticides called pyrethroids. However, in those cases, they did not get any benefit.

The team hopes to conduct additional testing to establish how much soap is needed to increase the pesticides.

“We would love to create a soap-pesticide formulation that can be used indoors in Africa and is healthy for users,” Kamdem said.

–IANS

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