Wolbachia launch areas and timeline in Niterói, Brazil. (a) Map of Niterói displaying the discharge zones, and the situation of Niterói inside Rio de Janeiro State and Brazil (inset). (b) Timeline of wMel-infected Ae. aegypti releases in Zone 1 (February 2017–January 2018 and January–Might 2019); Zone 2 (June 2017–January 2018 and January–Might 2019); Zone 3 (November 2017–July 2018 and March–July 2019); Zone 4 (September–December 2019); and Zone 5 (November 2022–July 2023). Credit score: Tropical Medication and Infectious Illness (2025). DOI: 10.3390/tropicalmed10090237
Dengue has been a public well being drawback within the tropical world for many years and 2024 noticed a world dengue surge, with greater than 14 million instances and 10 thousand deaths reported worldwide—greater than double the figures for dengue epidemics beforehand recorded in 2023 and 2019.
In the midst of the world’s worst world dengue epidemic—town of Niterói, Brazil, was successfully protected in opposition to the lethal illness by an revolutionary program that launched a micro organism known as Wolbachia into the native mosquito inhabitants, decreasing their capacity to transmit dengue and decreasing the speed of dengue by nearly 90%.
In accordance with the authors, the examine findings “suggest that Wolbachia prevented at least three-quarters of the dengue case burden that may have otherwise occurred in Niterói in 2024, corresponding to thousands of cases averted.”
The examine, led by the World Mosquito Program and researchers at Monash College in Melbourne, Australia, and revealed within the journal Tropical Medication and Infectious Illnesses, concerned the discharge of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes contaminated with the wMel-strain Wolbachia micro organism all through Niterói, a metropolis of half 1,000,000 folks in Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil. Inside 5 years of the introduction, the vast majority of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in Niterói carried Wolbachia, decreasing the incidence of dengue by 89%.
Affiliate Professor Katherine Anders from Monash College and Professor Luciano Moreira, from the World Mosquito Program and now CEO of Wolbito do Brasil, led the examine evaluating the long-term public well being affect of the Wolbachia deployments in Niterói.
Of explicit significance was the discovering that dengue incidence in Niterói in 2024—which was a interval of file excessive incidence of the illness in Brazil—was 374 per 100,000 inhabitants, considerably decrease than general in Rio de Janeiro state (1,884 per 100,000) and nationwide in Brazil (3,157 per 100,000).
In accordance with Affiliate Professor Anders, the examine provides to the accumulating proof that profitable introduction of Wolbachia into mosquito populations is a sustainable intervention that gives ongoing safety to communities. This units it aside from conventional methods of controlling the mosquitoes that transmit dengue—comparable to the usage of insecticide, which has led to resistance and is difficult to ship in complicated city environments.
In July, Brazil unveiled the world’s largest biofactory, Wolbito do Brasil, situated in Curibita, devoted to breeding mosquitoes contaminated with Wolbachia micro organism, described by Professor Moreira as “an innovative method poised to safeguard an estimated 140 million people from dengue fever across the nation in the coming years.”
Extra data:
Katherine L. Anders et al, Lengthy-Time period Sturdiness and Public Well being Influence of Metropolis-Huge wMel Wolbachia Mosquito Releases in Niterói, Brazil, Throughout a Dengue Epidemic Surge, Tropical Medication and Infectious Illness (2025). DOI: 10.3390/tropicalmed10090237
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Within the midst of a world dengue epidemic, one program stored a Brazilian metropolis secure (2025, October 16)
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