How Mosquitoes Resist Repellents: New Arthropod Research Service On Display - 20 December 2011

PHILADELPHIA - How populations of mosquitoes become insensitive to insect repellents has been researched by scientists at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, in collaboration with Rothamsted Research, and discussed at the American Society of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene conference in Philadelphia. This was one of the many activities of Dr James Logan, who also runs a new service made available by the London School called: the Arthropod Control Product Test Centre, or ARCTEC. Dr Logan told Peter Goodwin about the results of an experiment in which volunteers were exposed to mosquitoes after being sprayed with the powerful insect repellent, DEET. Resistance developed among the mosquitoes with the proportion of DEET-insensitive mosquitoes rising from a normal level of 10 per cent up to 60 per cent in a single generation.