300,000 anti-dengue mosquitoes released in Australia...

Some 300,000 mosquitoes with the potential to block the spread of dengue fever have been released in Australia, in a large-scale trial of one of the most promising techniques to rid the world of the disease.

Dengue fever infects around 100 million people in the tropics each year, killing 40,000 people annually. Insecticides and nets provide the most effective means to control the disease at present, says Scott O'Neill at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, but the dengue virus's range continues to grow. In 2009, for instance, it reached Buenos Aires in Argentina for the first time, while France reported its first locally acquired case of dengue fever in 2010.

Last year, O'Neill and colleagues announced plans to release Aedes aegypti mosquitoes infected with a fruit-fly bacterium called Wolbachia. The bacterium makes the mosquitoes less able to carry the dengue virus, and it could therefore limit dengue transmission if it were to become widespread in the mosquito population. More...

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