Abstract
The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that people travelling to or living in areas with Zika virus (ZIKV) outbreaks or epidemics adopt prophylactic measures to reduce or eliminate mosquito bites, including the use of insect repellents. It is, however, unknown whether repellents are effective against ZIKV-infected mosquitoes, in part because of the ethical concerns related to exposing a human subject’s arm to infected mosquitoes in the standard arm-in-cage assay. We used a previously developed, human subject-free behavioural assay, which mimics a human subject to evaluate the top two recommended insect repellents. Our measurements showed that DEET provided significantly higher protection than picaridin provided against noninfected, host-seeking females of the southern house mosquito, Culex quinquefasciatus, and the yellow fever mosquito, Aedes aegypti. When tested at lower doses, we observed a significant reduction in DEET-elicited protection against ZIKV-infected yellow fever mosquitoes from old and recent laboratory colonies. The reduction in protection is more likely associated with aging than the virus infection and could be compensated by applying a 5x higher dose of DEET. A substantial protection against ZIKV-infected and old noninfected mosquitoes was achieved with 5% DEET, which corresponds approximately to a 30% dose in the conventional arm-in-cage assays.
Highlights
The Zika virus (ZIKV) was isolated from a sentinel rhesus monkey almost seven decades ago during a long-term research program sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation and aimed at unravelling the cycle of sylvan yellow fever virus in Uganda[1]
Without a ZIKV vaccine, the main recommendations by World Health Organization (WHO) are wearing clothes that cover as much of the body as possible, using physical barriers such as window screens, sleeping under mosquito nets, and using insect repellents for protection against mosquito bites
It evaluates only spatial repellency given that the blood and repellent sources are spatially separated; to reach a blood source, no direct contact between the repellent and the gustatory system is needed
Summary
The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that people travelling to or living in areas with Zika virus (ZIKV) outbreaks or epidemics adopt prophylactic measures to reduce or eliminate mosquito bites, including the use of insect repellents. It is, unknown whether repellents are effective against ZIKV-infected mosquitoes, in part because of the ethical concerns related to exposing a human subject’s arm to infected mosquitoes in the standard arm-in-cage assay. ® Aedes aegypti, than its more modern counterpart, picaridin (Icaridin, Bayrepel , butan-2-yl 2-(2-hydroxyethyl) piperidine-1-carboxylate) We show both laboratory and field populations of the yellow fever mosquito from Brazil appear to have somewhat reduced responses to repellents at the age that they are competent for ZIKV transmission than younger, healthy mosquitoes used for standard efficacy testing. For protection against ZIKV, higher doses of DEET-based repellents should be applied
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