Vector Transmission clinical trials

Attractive Targeted Sugar Bait Trial in Mali

Globally, the female mosquitoes to be effective at transmitting malaria parasites, must have a number of characteristics including: abundance, longevity (individual mosquitoes must survive long enough after feeding on infected blood to allow the parasite time to develop and travel to the mosquito's salivary glands), capacity (each female mosquito must be both susceptible to infection with Plasmodium and able to carry enough malaria parasites in the salivary glands), contact with humans (frequently feed on humans). Vectors in SSA are often anthropophagic and anthropophilic, and exhibit indoor biting and indoor resting behavior. Highly effective interventions against vectors have been developed and implemented at scale (e.g., indoor Residual Spraying of Insecticides [IRS] and Long Lasting Insecticide-treated Nets [LLINs]). While these interventions have contributed importantly to the reduction of malaria transmission and disease (68% and 11% respectively), none of them target outdoor-biting g and outdoor-resting mosquitoes. Given the increase in resistance to current generation of insecticides and the behavioral plasticity of vectors that results in continued malaria transmission despite high coverage of LLINs or IRS, there is a need for interventions that can supplement and complement LLINs and IRS by killing mosquitoes outside houses using other biologic mechanisms (e.g., targeting sugar feeding behavior). Finally, insecticides with novel modes of action that may be capable of restoring sensitivity to pyrethroids by killing both pyrethroid resistant and sensitive mosquitoes are required. Attractive Target Sugar Baits (ATSBs) that kill mosquitoes through the ingestion of the toxicant dinotefuran (and possibly by other ingestion toxicants that are effective when ingested) potentially fill the need for outdoor interventions with novel killing effects. This study aims to establish the efficacy and contribution of the ATSBs for controlling malaria transmission where An. gambiae s.l. and An. Funestus are the major vectors for malaria.