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New method can detect infectious diseases using ‘flying syringes’
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Using hematophagous flies as “flying syringes” can reveal blood-borne pathogen diversity in wild animals, acting as a tool to detect emerging infectious diseases before they spread to humans, according to findings published in eLife.
“This is a huge public health issue that urgently requires new tools for the active monitoring of outbreaks and rapid diagnosis of the pathogens involved,” Franck Prugnolle, evolutionary geneticist from the National Center for Scientific Research (NCSR) in Montpellier, France, said in the press release. “We wanted to investigate whether blood-feeding insects could act as a sampling tool out in the wild environment, allowing us to monitor the presence and emergence of infectious disease.”
Increased human contact with wildlife has led to the discovery of many new pathogens each year, which, in turn, increases the potential for emerging zoonotic diseases and possible resulting epidemics. Because DNA from host animals and pathogens is preserved in the blood meals of flies, researchers sought to discover if blood meals could be used to non-invasively study the circulation of pathogens in wild animals. Prugnolle and colleagues set traps for three types of fly in four national parks of Gabon, Central Africa over a 16-week period, then analyzed the caught insects’ blood meals to uncover the origin of the blood and the species of any present malaria parasites.
Out of more than 4,000 captured flies – most of which were tsetse flies, who are responsible for spreading African sleeping sickness and feed on a large range of wildlife in Central Africa — 30% were engorged with blood. The investigators found the host origin for 75% of these samples using a method for closely analyzing host blood DNA. This technique also enabled the researchers to detect the previously unknown hosts of some malaria species. The results showed that the flies fed on more than 20 different species, including elephants, hippopotamuses, reptiles and birds. Malaria parasites presented in about 9% of the blood meals, 18 cases of which were from previously undocumented malaria species.
“These results show that blood meals of the engorged flies can be successfully used to analyze the diversity of known malaria parasites,” Prugnolle added in the release. “This approach of ‘xenosurveillance’ could detect pathogens before they spread to humans, as well as the emergence of new diseases in wild animals that may threaten their long-term survival.” – by Savannah Demko
Disclosures: Infectious Disease News was unable to confirm any relevant financial disclosures at the time of publication.
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