Tanzania : Mosquitoes kill over 700,000 people each year, but scientists have discovered a frightening trait that may make their killers even more powerful. A mutant breed of mosquitoes that transmit malaria in Tanzania has acquired resistance to DDT, a pesticide that has been prohibited for over a decade.
Researchers from the University of Glasgow and Tanzania’s Ifakara Health Institute determined that Anopheles funestus mosquitos, the principal malaria vectors in Eastern and Southern Africa, have genetically adapted to withstand exposure to the once-effective pesticide. This significant development raises severe concerns about the future of malaria management.
According to DailyMail, Joel Odero, a PhD student at the University of Glasgow and the study’s principal author, says, “The arrival of new resistance mechanisms could threaten century of progress made in reduced malaria transmission and mortality.”
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While mosquito nets have effectively averted 633 million malaria cases each year, chemical insecticides remain a critical tool for controlling mosquito populations. However, when researchers tested mosquitos from ten Tanzanian locations, they discovered troubling indicators of resistance. The culprit is a genetic mutation called “L976F,” which gives mosquitos “knock-down resistance” to DDT.
The study found that mosquitoes in Tanzania Morogoro region survived DDT exposure 32% of the time
The study found that mosquitoes in Tanzania’s Morogoro region survived DDT exposure 32% of the time, in sharp contrast to other places where mosquitoes died almost entirely. Between 2017 and 2023, genetic sequencing indicated that an alarming 90% of the Morogoro mosquito population developed this resistance.
Our results highlight the possible problems with the effectiveness of existing malaria control strategies, which are heavily dependent on insecticides,” Odero informed the audience. “Grasping how insecticide resistance evolves is crucial in the fight against malaria, a disease that claims hundreds of thousands of lives each year, primarily in Africa.”
Mosquitoes, like bacteria, can adapt fast in response to novel chemical treatments. This “evolutionary pressure” permits only the most resistant mosquitos to survive and pass their genes on to succeeding generations, rendering pesticides useless.
This situation is particularly perplexing given that DDT has been prohibited in Tanzania since 2008, following disclosures of its damaging effects on human health, including ties to cancer, infertility, and developmental delays. Tanzania, meanwhile, continued to keep outmoded pesticide stockpiles, including DDT, until 2012.
The researchers uncovered a 30-tonne DDT stockpile just 50 kilometers from where the resistant mosquitoes were first identified, implying that historical contamination with this chemical was sufficient to cause the mutation’s dissemination.
Dr. Francesco Baldini, a co-author from the University of Glasgow, stated, “Our results reveal the extensive and unforeseen consequences associated with past insecticide usage, emphasizing how historical environmental contamination can influence the evolution of the vector population and affect current health promotion efforts.”
Despite the rapid proliferation of the L976F gene, researchers were relieved to see that by 2023, this genetic mutation had almost completely gone, thanks to Tanzania’s effective efforts to eradicate remaining DDT stockpiles.
However, Professor Fredros Okumu of the University of Glasgow and Ifakara Health Institute has made a request for “urgent” research into the possibility of comparable resistance mechanisms emerging in response to additional pesticides, highlighting the vulnerability of present malaria control measures.
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