Effect of Malnutrition in Vertebrates on the Vectorial Competence of Aedes aegypti
Science / Life Sciences
Our diet affects our health and can influence whether we get sick during an infection. Similarly, dietary health is also an important factor in the immune competence of other animals, including female mosquitoes. Female mosquitoes feed on blood to obtain the nutritional reserves used to make eggs. However, it is unclear how the quality of the blood ingested by mosquitoes affects their health and ability to transmit diseases.
As a pandemic of malnutrition, obesity, and diabetes spreads, we ask whether variations in blood composition caused by dietary imbalance can affect the health of the mosquitoes that ingest this blood. We also want to know if these changes in blood composition affect mosquitoes’ ability to transmit a huge range of diseases to humans.
