Scientists have found that dengue fever could be controlled by using parasites to shorten the life span of mosquitoes.

With laboratory-bred mosquitoes, the Australian scientists found that Wolbachia bacteria spread well. Researchers from the School of Integrative Biology at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, and the College of Life Sciences at Central China Normal University in Wuhan, conducted the study and published it in the journal Science.

As only older mosquitoes pass the disease so killing them is the best way of preventing disease spread. The researchers were able to halve the lifespan of ‘Aedes aegypti’ mosquitoes by infecting them with a bacterial parasite in laboratory conditions, but it remained to be seen how well the bacteria would spread outside, experts said. 

Researchers found that the link between parasite and the host mosquito was ‘stable’ and with a high frequency it passed onto the next generation. Infected female can pass the bacteria to offspring and by this the population of mosquito can become infected with parasite very quickly and infected males could only produce offspring with infected females.

Researchers said: “Our data suggest that targeting mosquito age with inherited Wolbachia infections may be a viable strategy to reduce the transmission of pathogens such as dengue viruses.”

Dr Andrew Read and Dr Matthew Thomas, specialists in infectious disease dynamics at Pennsylvania State University in the US, said that while the study shows that there could be “substantial” reductions in disease transmission, but still there were many obstacles. They wrote: “Determining whether it can remove enough infectious mosquitoes will be a challenge.”