(ORDO NEWS) — Climate change and rising temperatures will increase the range of the Aedes aegypti mosquito, potentially causing up to a billion more people to become infected with dengue by 2080. This is reported in the latest report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The incidence of Dengue fever, which causes fever, vomiting, rash, and pain in the muscles and joints, is already growing today, experts say – if in 2000 WHO registered 504 thousand cases, then in 2019 – already 5.2 million.
This surge is partly explained by improvement in diagnostics, but it has another reason – the spread of the vector of fever, the Aedes aegypti mosquito, and the growth of its resistance to insecticides.
It may be possible to contain the spread of the virus with the help of Wolbachia, bacteria that infect insects, including mosquitoes.
Earlier studies have shown that infection of Aedes aegypti with Wolbachia reduces the risk of developing symptomatic dengue fever by almost 80%. It is also possible to use genetic engineering to create sterilized male mosquitoes, which in the future will reduce the population size.
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