Breakthrough in dengue fever

MELBOURNE (Jan 2, 2009):  Australian researchers have made a breakthrough that could curb the spread of the mosquito-borne dengue fever virus.

Scientists from the University of Queensland said they had proven that they could limit the lifespan of the Aedes aegypti, which spreads the disease.

In a paper published in the prestigious international journal, Science, the researchers said they could halve the insects' lifespan by infecting them with a bacterium that is harmless to humans and other animals.

The breakthrough could dramatically curtail the insects' potential to spread the disease because only older mosquitoes can transmit it to humans, Brisbane's Courier Mail newspaper reported.

PhD student Conor McMeniman, who carried out the research, used super-fine needles to manually inject 10,000 mosquito embryos with the bacterium, then encouraged the surviving mosquitoes to feed on his own blood.
 
"We ended up having to inject thousands of embryos to achieve success, but it was well and truly worth it in the end," he was quoted as saying.

Professor Scott O'Neill, head of the university's School of Biological Sciences, said researchers would now conduct field experiments in northern Queensland.

"If that proves successful, we hope to deploy this new dengue control measure in other parts of Australia, as well as Thailand and Vietnam," Professor O'Neill said.

There is no vaccine or cure for dengue fever. It harms up to 100 million people and kills more than 20,000 every year.  -- BERNAMA 
 __________________________________________________________________

Manually inject 10 000 mosquitoes?! how is tht even humanly possible?? Manually means using robot hands isnt?? Or the mosquitoes in Australia is weirdly big. Anyway, i really wanna see the procedure they use to do this.