Abstract
Every year, malaria kills approximately 405,000 people in Sub-Saharan Africa, most of them children under the age of five years. In many countries, progress in malaria control has been threatened by the rapid spread of resistance to antimalarial drugs and insecticides. Novel genetic mosquito control approaches could play an important role in future integrated malaria control strategies. In July 2019, the Target Malaria consortium proceeded with the first release of hemizygous genetically-modified (GM) sterile and non-transgenic sibling males of the malaria mosquito Anopheles coluzzii in Burkina Faso. This study aimed to determine the potential fitness cost associated to the transgene and gather important information related to the dynamic of transgene-carrying mosquitoes, crucial for next development steps. Bayesian estimations confirmed that GM males had lower survival and were less mobile than their wild type (WT) siblings. The estimated male population size in Bana village, at the time of the release was 28,000 - 37,000. These results provide unique information about the fitness and behaviour of released GM males that will inform future releases of more effective strains of the A. gambiae complex.
Highlights
Every year, malaria kills approximately 405,000 people in Sub-Saharan Africa, most of them children under the age of five years
The numbers of marked males recaptured quickly decreased over the 20 days, with the last marked male captured on day 17 (Table 1)
The first release of a genetically-modified strain of the malaria mosquito Anopheles coluzzii in Burkina Faso provided unique data on the survival and dispersal of the modified mosquitoes
Summary
Malaria kills approximately 405,000 people in Sub-Saharan Africa, most of them children under the age of five years. A consistent slowdown in the efficacy of current malaria control strategies has been observed since 2017 and malaria incidence is even increasing in many countries of Sub-Saharan Africa[1,5,6,7,8] threatening the ambitious control targets set for 20301 This situation is largely driven by the spread of resistance to drugs in the Plasmodium malaria parasite[9,10] and resistance to pesticides in malaria vector populations[11,12] as well as continuing issues of inadequate financing, gaps in management and community participation[7,13,14,15]. A substantial research effort is focused on developing safe and effective gene-drive constructs in mosquito vectors of malaria[31,32,33]
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