Authors

Discussion

Malaria is a deadly disease that mostly affects children in Sub-Saharan Africa. Prospects of eliminating malaria are threatened by resistance of malaria vectors to insecticides. Therefore, there is need to search for alternative, integrated vector control tools that could protect humans from infective mosquito bites. Previous studies showed that malaria-infected rodents and birds received more bites from mosquitoes than uninfected counterparts, suggesting that malaria parasites manipulate their vertebrate hosts to enhance transmission. Our research investigated the attraction of malaria mosquitoes to children (aged 5-12 years) infected with different life cycle stages of Plasmodium falciparum, identified by microscopy and Polymerase Chain Reaction. Attraction of An. gambiae to parasite-free children or children harbouring gametocyte or asexual stages of Plasmodium was evaluated using a dual-choice olfactometer. Worn socks were used as the control treatment. Each binary assay utilized 100 mosquitoes in 30 minutes. The tests were repeated after treating infected children with anti-malarials to assess intrinsic attractiveness. Our results show that gametocyte carriers attracted about twice as many mosquitoes as parasite-free children, and that children with asexual stages attracted intermediate numbers of mosquitoes. Findings from this study may have an impact on epidemiological models of malaria transmissi