The impact of pyrethroid resistance on the efficacy and effectiveness of bednets for malaria control in Africa

  1. Thomas S Churcher  Is a corresponding author
  2. Natalie Lissenden
  3. Jamie T Griffin
  4. Eve Worrall
  5. Hilary Ranson
  1. Imperial College London, United Kingdom
  2. Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, United Kingdom

Abstract

Long lasting pyrethroid treated bednets are the most important tool for preventing malaria. Pyrethroid resistant Anopheline mosquitoes are now ubiquitous in Africa though the public health impact remains unclear, impeding the deployment of more expensive nets. Meta-analyses of bioassay studies and experimental hut trials are used to characterise how pyrethroid resistance changes the efficacy of standard bednets, and those containing the synergist piperonyl butoxide (PBO), and assess its impact on malaria control. New bednets provide substantial personal protection until high levels of resistance though protection may wane faster against more resistant mosquito populations as nets age. Transmission dynamics models indicate that even low levels of resistance would increase the incidence of malaria due to reduced mosquito mortality and lower overall community protection over the life-time of the net. Switching to PBO bednets could avert up to 0.5 clinical cases per person per year in some resistance scenarios.

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Article and author information

Author details

  1. Thomas S Churcher

    MRC Centre for Outbreak Analysis and Modelling, Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom
    For correspondence
    thomas.churcher@imperial.ac.uk
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-8442-0525
  2. Natalie Lissenden

    Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Liverpool, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Jamie T Griffin

    MRC Centre for Outbreak Analysis and Modelling, Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Eve Worrall

    Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Liverpool, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  5. Hilary Ranson

    Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Liverpool, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

Funding

Medical Research Council

  • Thomas S Churcher

Department for International Development

  • Thomas S Churcher

European Research Council

  • Hilary Ranson

Innovative Vector Control Consortium

  • Thomas S Churcher

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Copyright

© 2016, Churcher et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

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  1. Thomas S Churcher
  2. Natalie Lissenden
  3. Jamie T Griffin
  4. Eve Worrall
  5. Hilary Ranson
(2016)
The impact of pyrethroid resistance on the efficacy and effectiveness of bednets for malaria control in Africa
eLife 5:e16090.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.16090

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.16090

Further reading

  1. Modelling the effectiveness of bednets against mosquitoes and malaria.

    1. Epidemiology and Global Health
    Yuan Zhang, Dan Tang ... Xing Zhao
    Research Article

    Background:

    Biological aging exhibits heterogeneity across multi-organ systems. However, it remains unclear how is lifestyle associated with overall and organ-specific aging and which factors contribute most in Southwest China.

    Methods:

    This study involved 8396 participants who completed two surveys from the China Multi-Ethnic Cohort (CMEC) study. The healthy lifestyle index (HLI) was developed using five lifestyle factors: smoking, alcohol, diet, exercise, and sleep. The comprehensive and organ-specific biological ages (BAs) were calculated using the Klemera–Doubal method based on longitudinal clinical laboratory measurements, and validation were conducted to select BA reflecting related diseases. Fixed effects model was used to examine the associations between HLI or its components and the acceleration of validated BAs. We further evaluated the relative contribution of lifestyle components to comprehension and organ systems BAs using quantile G-computation.

    Results:

    About two-thirds of participants changed HLI scores between surveys. After validation, three organ-specific BAs (the cardiopulmonary, metabolic, and liver BAs) were identified as reflective of specific diseases and included in further analyses with the comprehensive BA. The health alterations in HLI showed a protective association with the acceleration of all BAs, with a mean shift of –0.19 (95% CI −0.34, –0.03) in the comprehensive BA acceleration. Diet and smoking were the major contributors to overall negative associations of five lifestyle factors, with the comprehensive BA and metabolic BA accounting for 24% and 55% respectively.

    Conclusions:

    Healthy lifestyle changes were inversely related to comprehensive and organ-specific biological aging in Southwest China, with diet and smoking contributing most to comprehensive and metabolic BA separately. Our findings highlight the potential of lifestyle interventions to decelerate aging and identify intervention targets to limit organ-specific aging in less-developed regions.

    Funding:

    This work was primarily supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 82273740) and Sichuan Science and Technology Program (Natural Science Foundation of Sichuan Province, Grant No. 2024NSFSC0552). The CMEC study was funded by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2017YFC0907305, 2017YFC0907300). The sponsors had no role in the design, analysis, interpretation, or writing of this article.