BACKGROUND Official guidelines commonly advise travelers to burn mosquito coils as one means of preventing malaria. The objective of this study was to discover if insecticide-containing mosquito coils (1) prevent mosquito bites and therefore malaria acquisition, and (2) are safe in terms of their adverse effects on human users. METHODS We sought published and unpublished controlled trials in ...

Callicarpenal (=13,14,15,16-tetranorclerod-3-en-12-al=[(1S,2R,4aR,8aR)-1,2,3,4,4a,7,8,8a-octahydro-1,2,4a,5-tetramethylnaphthalen-1-yl]acetaldehyde; 1) has previously demonstrated significant mosquito bite-deterring activity against Aedes aegypti and Anopheles stephensi in addition to repellent activity against host-seeking nymphs of the blacklegged tick, Ixodes scapularis. In the present study...

Vector-borne diseases constitute an enormous burden on public health across the world. However, despite the importance of interactions between infectious pathogens and their respective vector for disease transmission, the biology of the pathogen in the insect is often less well understood than the forms that cause human infections. Even with the global impact of Plasmodium parasites, the causat...

When Anopheles mosquitoes probe the skin for blood feeding, they inject saliva in dermal tissue. Mosquito saliva is known to exert various biological activities, but its perception by the immune system and its role in parasite transmission remain poorly understood. In the present study, we report on the cellular changes occurring in the mouse skin and draining lymph nodes after a Anopheles step...

Hypersensitivity to mosquito bites is defined as the appearance of intense skin reactive lesions and systemic symptoms subsequent to mosquito bites. Most cases of hypersensitivity to mosquito bites reported thus far have been associated with chronic Epstein-Barr virus infection or natural killer cell leukemia/lymphoma. In this study, we describe the case of an 18-year-old Korean boy who had hyp...

Dengue viruses (DENV) are transmitted to humans by the bite of Aedes aegypti or Aedes albopictus mosquitoes, with millions of infections annually in over 100 countries. The diseases they produce, which occur exclusively in humans, are dengue fever (DF) and dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF). We previously developed a humanized mouse model of DF in which mice transplanted with human hematopoietic st...

The circumsporozoite protein (CSP) from the surface of sporozoite stage Plasmodium sp. malaria parasites is among the most important of the malaria vaccine candidates. Gene gun injection of genetic vaccines encoding Plasmodium berghei CSP induces a significant protective effect against sporozoite challenge; however, intramuscular injection does not. In the present study we compared the immune r...

Malaria eradication will require a combination of vector control, chemotherapy and an easily administered vaccine. Sterile immunity can be elicited in humans by immunization with sporozoites, the infective stage injected by bite of the mosquito vector, however, whole parasite vaccines present formidable logistical challenges for production, storage and administration. The "gold standard" for in...