Eave ribbons treated with transfluthrin can protect both users and non-users against malaria vectors

Eave ribbons treated with spatial repellents effectively prevent human exposure to outdoor-biting and indoor-biting malaria mosquitoes, and could constitute a scalable and low-cost supplement to current interventions, such as insecticide-treated nets (ITNs). This study measured protection afforded by transfluthrin-treated eave ribbons to users (personal and communal protection) and non-users (only communal protection), and whether introducing mosquito traps as additional intervention influenced these benefits.; Five experimental huts were constructed inside a 110 m long, screened tunnel, in which 1000 Anopheles arabiensis were released nightly. Eave ribbons treated with 0.25 g/m; 2; transfluthrin were fitted to 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 huts, achieving 0, 20, 40, 60, 80 and 100% coverage, respectively. Volunteers sat near each hut and collected mosquitoes attempting to bite them from 6 to 10 p.m. (outdoor-biting), then went indoors to sleep under untreated bed nets, beside which CDC-light traps collected mosquitoes from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. (indoor-biting). Caged mosquitoes kept inside the huts were monitored for 24 h-mortality. Separately, eave ribbons, UV-LED mosquito traps (Mosclean) or both the ribbons and traps were fitted, each time leaving the central hut unfitted to represent non-user households and assess communal protection. Biting risk was measured concurrently in all huts, before and after introducing interventions.; Transfluthrin-treated eave ribbons provided 83% and 62% protection indoors and outdoors respectively to users, plus 57% and 48% protection indoors and outdoors to the non-user. Protection for users remained constant, but protection for non-users increased with eave ribbons coverage, peaking once 80% of huts were fitted. Mortality of mosquitoes caged inside huts with eave ribbons was 100%. The UV-LED traps increased indoor exposure to users and non-users, but marginally reduced outdoor-biting. Combining the traps and eave ribbons did not improve user protection relative to eave ribbons alone.; Transfluthrin-treated eave ribbons protect both users and non-users against malaria mosquitoes indoors and outdoors. The mosquito-killing property of transfluthrin can magnify the communal benefits by limiting unwanted diversion to non-users, but should be validated in field trials against pyrethroid-resistant vectors. Benefits of the UV-LED traps as an intervention alone or alongside eave ribbons were however undetectable in this study. These findings extend the evidence that transfluthrin-treated eave ribbons could complement ITNs

Peri-domestic vector control interventions using attractive targeted sugar baits and push-pull strategies

Great challenges to sustained malaria and arbovirus control remain, including transmission by vectors that occur outdoors or outside of sleeping hours, the enormous scale of larval breeding in urban centres and the failure of people to comply with vector control. Furthermore, developing insecticide resistance, shifts in vector dominance and behaviour emphasises the need for new integrated vector management strategies. Behavioural aspects of the mosquitoes' lifecycle, such as mating, oviposition, sugar- and host-seeking, are influenced by olfactory cues in the environment. This chapter focuses on two new technologies that are in development for targeted vector control in and around the home that require minimal compliance from users. Both technologies exploit specific olfactory mechanisms in mosquito genera that could unlock the potential for highly targeted vector control interventions. Attractive targeted sugar baits (ATSB) exploit mosquito sugar-feeding behaviour to deploy insecticides. They use an attractive scent as an olfaction stimulant and a sugar solution as a feeding stimulant mixed with an oral insecticide to induce mosquito mortality upon ingestion. ATSB methods may be deployed as a stand-alone method or integrated with other interventions. They are technologically and operationally simple, low-cost and effective across all major mosquito genera. A major benefit of ATSB is that it targets and kills male and female mosquitoes on emergence from breeding sites and multiple contact points throughout the mosquito's lifetime, increasing the likelihood of reducing the mosquito's lifespan, and thus, its probability of transmitting disease. Push-pull systems exploit mosquito host-seeking behaviour using a combination of spatial repellents and lure and kill strategies to push mosquitoes away from the home or the peridomestic space and into traps that mimic vertebrate hosts. At the moment, the greatest limitation to push-pull systems is the need for CO2 to attract mosquitoes. Most of the current trials have shown that efficacy of the push-pull strategy is primarily reliant upon the push unit, with only marginally improved efficacy with the addition of the pull unit. This finding could potentially be due to the size of these studies, because community-level protection from malaria using removal trapping has been demonstrated