The grids treated with insecticide hold mosquitoes from biting at night, but how do you protect children when they come out? One researcher had an idea that included a traditional wrapper used in Africa south of Sahara.
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Jeffrey Davis/Tetra Images Rf/Via Getty Images
Babies can soon join the soldiers in the fight to prevent malaria.
For many years, the American military treated an insecticide form to reflect mosquitoes and malaria that they can transmit. Ross Boys Previously, wearing one before becoming a doctor in infectious diseases and a malaria researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel -Hill.
He wondered whether children could get the same protection from the uniform, and turning to children's wrappers, which many mothers in Africa countries south of Sahara use to wear their babies.
“It seems that this is obvious,” he says, especially taking into account the risk-mail every minute, a child under 5 years old in Africa south of Sakhara dies of malaria. In addition, existing tools, such as awakened insecticides Caps of nets It can protect children only during the back.
Thus, Boyce and his colleagues checked this idea in a large randomized controlled study. In the rural part of Western Uganda, 200 mothers with children aged 6 to 18 months received a children's film impregnated with permetrine, while 200 more people received a wrapper, simply soaked in water. All participants also received a completely new bloody network.
Within 6 months, young participants visited clinics every two weeks to check for the symptoms of malaria and tested. The team was also looking for side effects. Every four weeks, the researchers re -threw the wrappers in case the permetrine is leaving. “It was probably unnecessary,” says Boyce. “But we really wanted to know if we have enough permeterine, it works?”
Answer: Loud yes. “It was the level of effect, which exceeded even our most daring expectations,” says Boyce.
Within 6 months, 34 children in the Permetrin-Frap group gave a positive result for malaria, compared with 94 in the soaked water, the wrapper group, decrease about 65%Field
“This is a really great reduction, surprisingly,” says Thomas EiseelThe researcher of malaria at the University of Tulane, who did not participate in the study. According to him, the scale of the reduction suggests that mosquitoes bite more often than they thought in the daytime.
“We fell into a brick wall, where we simply did not achieve progress with our existing tools,” Eiseel says. “These types of interventions will be critical.”
The main abbreviation, it seems, did not have the main side effects during the experiment, which was anxiety. Permetrin It can cause growth and neurological problems if they are swallowed at high levels.
“When [permethrin] It is processed on the fabric, through the skin there is much less transmission, ”he says. In addition, the children were generally dressed under the film, so there was no direct contact. Nevertheless, about 8.5% of children had a slight rash in the treatment group compared to 6% in control.
“Nothing is a zero risk, and this is a compromise that must be taken into account,” he says, “but we know that malaria is not useful for children.”
According to Boyce, in the real world, the retreat of wrappers as often as during the experiment may be impractical. But this may also not be required, since manufacturers can create long -term clothing that received permetrin.
In the future, Boyce imagines that mothers can get a long wrapper when they come to clinics to get vaccines, providing some additional protection before children begin to walk on their own.
However, the deployment can work, the demand will be high, the co -author of the study predicts Edgar MugoiResearcher at Mbar University in Uganda. “Excitement for use [the wraps] It was just amazing, ”he says. He heard one participant said – when the children were in
