“One way to stop the spread of diseases transmitted by insects is to make the blood of animals and humans toxic to these blood feeding insects,” Lee R. Haines, who authored a landmark study, stated. The new method is successful on a new assault on anti malaria, a deadly disease that kills over half a million individuals annually. Scientists discovered that the drug used to treat genetic disease nitisinone causes human blood to be lethal to mosquitoes and is another weapon in the battle against transmission of mosquito borne illness. Nitisinone makes the blood deadly to this by disrupting the enzyme activity of the 4 hydroxyphenylpyruvate dioxygenase (HPPD) enzyme, a key metabolic enzyme for the amino acid tyrosine.
In human beings, the process is applied in treating alkaptonuria and disease tyrosinemia type 1. Patient blood on the drug given to patients, nevertheless, ingested by mosquitoes, results in the degradation of the digestive system and death within a short time. In the lab population of mosquitoes used in conducting experiments, mosquitoes that fed on patients given the drug were dead after 12 hours. The discovery would introduce a novel mechanism of the mosquito and thus malaria control. The drug utility is also introduced by the swift action of the drug on the mosquito.
Unlike the conventional insecticides that not only are the reason for the killing of the useful insects in themselves but are also toxic to the environment, nitisinone is very toxic to the vector insects. Selective activity provides an environmentally friendly alternative, succumbing to increasing demands for the green alternative to rule the conventional ways of mosquito control. Second, nitisinone is ivermectin toxic, the current gold standard against mosquitocidal drugs. As ivermectin is lethal to mosquitoes at sublethal concentrations, the action window is only temporary and has toxic consequences and ecological resistance. Nitisinone, however, lasts 16 days or longer in the blood, significantly enhancing its deadly effect.
Álvaro Acosta Serrano, co-corresponding author of the research, explained why timing was so important “Nitisinone performance was fantastic it has a much longer half life in human blood than ivermectin, which means its mosquitocidal activity remains circulating in the human body for much longer. This is critical when applied in the field for safety and economical reasons.” Not just more effective as it lasts longer but also due to the fact that it’s an inexpensive product to make large scale deployments.
Researchers conducted extensive experiments in an attempt to find out whether the drug was effective against the Anopheles gambiae mosquito that causes the majority of the malaria on the African continent. With the Robert Gregory National Alkaptonuria Centre, they treated blood samples with nitisinone during genetic disorder screening. The blood had what Haines has referred to as a “hidden superpower” for killing mosquitoes at all phases of the life cycle of mosquitoes, adult mosquitoes most likely to be infected with malaria parasites. Most striking is that the nitisinone killed resistant mosquitoes, a deadly plague in malarial regions of the world. The findings of the study have gigantic implications.
By eliminating mosquitoes, nitisinone would shorten the transmission cycle of the epidemics and, in theory if not practice, eradicate all outbreaks forever. That would verify the “herd immunity” hypothesis under which the combined impact of poisonous blood in a population reduces epidemic levels. Although nitisinone is not efficient in preventing human beings from being infected by malaria in direct terms, its new path of prevention through vaccines and bed nets is a new way of the old method. Scientists are also at the proposal stage of selecting the best dose of nitisinone that can be utilized in the field. Semi field trials will determine its impact in more modelled systems prior to program inclusion into malaria control programs. Rotational use of nitisinone and ivermectin will create the room for full mosquito control where ivermectin is used blanketwise because of widespread resistance or because widespread resistance has already been endured.
apart from prevention of malaria, other use of nitisinone would have incidental benefits to patients reliant on the drug for metabolic disease management.
Extra demand would keep the cost of manufacturing low, and thus the drug would be cheaper for patients to utilize as an alternative non pesticidal drug. As Acosta Serrano further clarified, “Nitisinone is a versatile compound that can also be used as an insecticide. What’s particularly interesting is that it specifically targets blood sucking insects, making it an environmentally friendly option.” Worth noting is that it is highly effective as a control against hematophagous insects and thus it is ecologically friendly. Where with the very promising results, researchers are being careful seed of how much more work they have to do before they can safely determine the environment impact of nitisinone uses on large scales. Although initial indications are no causes for concern in terms of non targets, its long term impact that how it will eventually affect the system is unknown.
Secondly, nitisinone’s mosquito immunity is something which has to be weighed where such a drug will make itself irrelevant if launched broadly in mass drug administration campaigns. But harnessing the human blood and using it as an agent of mosquito poisoning is a stride that is taking galaxies to battle malaria. With activist networks and worldwide health associations supporting this innovation, nitisinone can be the solution to eliminating one of the world’s deadliest diseases. With ongoing technology and collaboration, this new idea can drive us to complete malaria eradication. More about how nitisinone resists mosquito digestion, how it differs from ivermectin, and what is happening with field trials.
