Researchers in the Ward and Kahr Groups teamed up with the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and the Innovative Vector Control Consortium to test deltamethrin on a suite of highly insecticide-resistant Anopheles mosquitoes from West Africa. They found that the more active form was 100% effective against these malaria vectors, a substantial improvement over the commercially available form. The study, published in Malaria Journal, is entitled, "Overcoming insecticide resistance in Anopheles mosquitoes by using faster-acting solid forms of deltamethrin." NYU authors include graduate students Bryan Erriah and Leilani Smith, researcher Alexander Shtukenburg and professors Michael D. Ward and Bart Kahr. The research was picked up as an NYU Research Highlight, "“Supercharged” insecticide effective against insecticide-resistant mosquitoes."
Abstract: Controlling malaria-transmitting Anopheles mosquitoes with pyrethroid insecticides is becoming increasingly challenging because of widespread resistance amongst vector populations. The development of new insecticides and insecticidal formulations is time consuming and costly, however. A more active crystalline form of deltamethrin, prepared by heating the commercial crystalline form, previously was reported to be 12-times faster acting against susceptible North American Anopheles quadrimaculatus mosquitoes. Herein the potential for heat-activated deltamethrin dispersed on chalk to overcome various resistance mechanisms amongst five West African Anopheles strains is investigated, and its long-term sustained lethality evaluated.