Scientists take a swat at mosquitoes

But a new development in vaccine technology could possibly change that. This week, researchers at Stony Brook University in New York announced they'd developed a new method of designing vaccines that could potentially make the process faster and cheaper.

The researchers, including Steffen Mueller, Bruce Futcher and Steven Skiena, found they could genetically alter viruses to make them weaker and reduce their ability to multiply in the body. In trials, mice fought off a weakened version of polio, leaving them with immunity to the "wild" virus. Details are in the June 26 issue of the journal Science.

The researchers said this method could allow scientists to develop new vaccine candidates much faster than currently possible, basically speeding up the turn-around time between deciding to find a vaccine for a certain virus and having a workable candidate in-hand.

And while much of the expense of developing a vaccine lies in extensive clinical trials, a hurdle which probably won't go away, this new method could cut earlier development costs, and potentially make it possible to create vaccines for diseases that currently don't have one, the researchers said.

Better repellents
Another major area of research is better repellents, which could keep mosquitoes away from people more effectively. Becnel's colleague from the USDA, Ulrich Bernier, along with researchers from the University of Florida, recently made some big breakthroughs in this field.

Using 50 years of data on repellent chemicals, the team trained a brain-based computer program to recognize the molecular structures and components common to effective repellents. Then, they set the program to work analyzing some 2,000 chemical compounds, looking for the ones that shared those traits.

The result was 23 newly synthesized compounds that have the potential to outperform all repellents currently on the market, according to the May 27 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In fact, while the most common current repellent, DEET, remains effective in a closed environment for about 17 days, one of the new compounds stuck it out for 85.

This type of data-mining research isn't new, but how it's being applied is. "The pharmaceutical people have been using this method for years to design drugs, but it's just now that the mosquito people are getting into it too," Becnel said.

Home invasion
Actually, fending off mosquitoes doesn't require lab access. Conlon said that folks at home can play along. All you need to do is follow what he calls the Three D's.

Drain: Mosquito eggs need water to hatch. But they don't need large amounts of water. Conlon has seen the bugs breed in everything from discarded bottle caps to creases on tarps. If you don't want mosquitoes breeding in your backyard, you need to be fastidious about removing all sources of standing water, no matter how small.

Dress: Conlon said mosquitoes can bite through tight clothes and are attracted to dark colors. The ideal mosquito-resistant outfits are ensembles that are loose-fitting, long-sleeved, and light-colored. "In particular, they have a hard time seeing the color yellow," he said. "Yellow bug lights can be useful because of this. They don't repel mosquitoes, but they don't attract them, either."

Defend: There are only four active ingredients currently approved by the Food and Drug Administration to effectively and safely repel mosquitoes: DEET, picaridin, ir3535, and, for those who prefer a plant-based option, oil of lemon eucalyptus. Conlon said it's important to look for these ingredients because there are many mosquito repellents on the market that simply don't work.

"Popular folk remedies like garlic and Vitamin B-1 have been shown to be useless in double blind studies," he said. Others, such as oil of clove, are known repellents, but only at high concentrations that would burn human skin. "So it works, but not at the low levels used in any product. There, it just smells nice," he said.

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