KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – Watching them feast was pretty unnerving. Their whiney buzz cut through the silence, a swarm of mosquitoes hovering and then settling in a dish containing a cocktail of human blood and the often deadly dengue fever virus.
Thankfully, this banquet was contained in a cage of fine netting inside a laboratory at Kuala Lumpur’s Institute of Medical Research. The mosquitoes would later be separated, and kept at different temperatures. The results so far show that a rise of four degrees Fahrenheit (from 82 degrees to 86 degrees) can almost double the speed at which the virus develops in the mosquito.
“The incubation period of the virus become shorter, so they become very infective much faster than before,” said Dr Lokman Hakim, the head of disease control at Malaysia’s health department.
Other new research suggests that rising temperatures shorten the lifespan of mosquitoes, making them hungrier – they bite more, in other words.
Dengue is just one vector-borne disease, but it is the fastest growing. Worldwide, the World Health Organization estimates that there are around 50 hundred million dengue infections a year. More than 25,000 people are killed by more severe forms of a related disease called “break-bone fever” because of the severe joint pain it can produce, as well as headaches and fever.
It used to be contained largely to south-east Asia, but has been spreading, and is now found in South America, Africa, south Asia and parts of Australia. It recently turned up in Nepal, and last month returned to Florida for the first time in 50 years. Increasingly scientists are blaming climate change, supported by Malaysia’s ground-breaking research.
“Dengue will be a global problem in terms of health,” said Dr. Samlee Plianbangchang, the World Health Organization’s South-East Asia Director. “Because as climate changes and temperatures rise, mosquitoes breed better.”
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