{"id":51432,"date":"2017-11-09T06:04:55","date_gmt":"2017-11-09T06:04:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=51432"},"modified":"2017-11-09T06:04:55","modified_gmt":"2017-11-09T06:04:55","slug":"us-epa-shows-way-forward-malaria-zika-virus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/health\/us-epa-shows-way-forward-malaria-zika-virus.html","title":{"rendered":"US EPA shows the way forward on malaria, zika virus"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 18pt\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">US EPA shows the way forward on malaria, zika virus<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">US EPA shows the way forward on malaria, zika virus:- For the US, weaponised mosquitoes to control destabilise Aedes mosquito populations, and thus help checkmate Zika and yellow fever, had been an anathema. To be sure, it wasn\u2019t that regulators\/administrators or policymakers didn\u2019t want them. It was the people. Over 150,000 Florida Keys residents had signed a petition to bar UK-based biotech firm Oxitec from conducting field tests of its bio-engineered Aedes strains that could cause the local, wild population to crash. Protesters proffered a host of unsubstantiated reasons, from \u201cthis will cause more aggressive species to move in\u201d and fill the void to \u201cno local cases of dengue in Florida Keys\u201d and even \u201cbringing down Aedes population could destabilise the environment\u201d. The US has come a long way from there. The US Environmental Protection Agency has just approved the release of similar bio-engineered strains by a Kentucky-based firm, MosquitoMate.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">The bio-engineered specimen of Aedes albopictus (Asian tiger mosquito) that has received the EPA nod carries Wolbachia pipientis, a bacterium that is found in many mosquitoes but not in Aedes. Lab-reared males, when released into the wild, will mate with wild females; though fertilised, the eggs from such mating won\u2019t hatch as the paternal chromosomes won\u2019t form properly. Bio-engineered mosquitoes have been the talk of the town\u2014from cytoplasmic incompatibility (that results in the unviable eggs) to feminisation\/sterilisation in male mosquitoes, Wolbachia has been demonstrated as a potent tool against mosquitoes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">In Anopheles gambiae, the most commons Anopheles species in Africa, the bacteria compete with Plasmodium, the malaria pathogen, for nutrients and choke it off. A particular strain of the bacteria can even bring vector (in this case, mosquitoes) life down. While China has given the nod to Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes, in Brazil, where their potential was demonstrated for the first time, the health regulator killed off the proposal for a nationwide release. The US getting convinced of their bio-safety should perhaps spur others, like India, Brazil and South Asian nations where the burden of mosquito-borne diseases is the highest, to open their doors as well.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 8pt\">Source:-\u00a0http:\/\/www.financialexpress.com\/opinion\/dealing-with-mosquitoes-us-epa-shows-the-way-forward-on-malaria-zika-virus\/925411\/<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-background-color\">\n\t\t\t  <div \n\t\t\t  \tclass = \"fb-comments\" \n\t\t\t  \tdata-href = \"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/health\/us-epa-shows-way-forward-malaria-zika-virus.html\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-numposts = \"10\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-lazy = \"true\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-colorscheme = \"light\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-order-by = \"social\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-mobile=true>\n\t\t\t  <\/div><\/div>\n\t\t  <style>\n\t\t    .fb-background-color {\n\t\t\t\tbackground: #ffffff !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t.fb_iframe_widget_fluid_desktop iframe {\n\t\t\t    width: 630px !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t  <\/style>\n\t\t  ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>US EPA shows the way forward on malaria, zika virus US EPA shows the way forward on malaria, zika virus:- For the US, weaponised mosquitoes to control destabilise Aedes mosquito populations, and thus help checkmate Zika and yellow fever, had been an anathema. To be sure, it wasn\u2019t that regulators\/administrators [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51436,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[96523,96522,547,96521,96525,96524],"class_list":["post-51432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","tag-aedes-mosquito-populations","tag-mosquitoes","tag-us","tag-us-epa-shows-the-way-forward-on-malaria-zika-virus","tag-yellow-fever","tag-zika"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51432\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}