A New Way to Keep Mosquitoes From Biting
An appetite-suppressing drug makes them act as if they’ve already feasted on blood.
The experiment really shouldn’t have worked. Several years ago, Laura Duvall from Rockefeller University decided to feed mosquitoes with experimental drugs designed to suppress the appetite of humans. Perhaps these chemicals might also reduce the insects’ appetite for blood? And, by extension, stop them from biting people and spreading diseases?
“The whole thing started off as a joke,” says Leslie Vosshall, who led the study. “The assumption was that the human drugs would kill the animal or have no effect. It was a stupid thing.”
So imagine her surprise when it worked.
The mosquito, which spreads dengue and Zika,
