Crisanti: “The Aedes mosquitoes advance in Italy but there is no Dengue alarm”

“Dengue is a mosquito-borne disease of the Aedes genus, which represents one of the most important problems in the world. The situation in Italy? In our country, certainly the major vector of Dengue, which is the Aedes aegypti mosquito, is not there. , has never been recently demonstrated in native breeding. And this is good news. But surely there are other species of Aedes mosquitoes that are invading Italy. This is the case, for example, of Aedes albopictus “, the tiger mosquitoes,” who have a low ability to transmit Dengue but transmit Chikungunya. So it is a situation of vigilance that we must have “. This is the analysis of Andrea Crisanti, director of the Department of Molecular Medicine at the University of Padua, who has many scientific studies to his credit, in particular on another species of mosquito, the one that transmits malaria. The expert comments to Adnkronos Salute the alarm launched by Singapore, which reported cases of Dengue more than doubled in 2022 compared to 2021, so much so that experts have pointed out that this is a bad signal for the world, and not only for the areas traditionally most beaten by mosquitoes carrying ‘bone-breaking fever’. The impact of a factor such as climate change is also aimed at. “Italy – highlights Crisanti – has also recently had episodes of transmission of tropical diseases such as Chikungunya, of which it has recorded several cases. This is an arbovirus that has characteristics similar to Dengue. The way to react, once any cases are identified and the origin should be indigenous, is to disinfect the area promptly “. Dengue is not a totally unknown disease in our latitudes. “If it is true that in Italy we have never had episodes of endogenous transmission of Dengue, it must be said that in Europe there was an important epidemic in the past years in Madeira, Portugal, which lasted quite a bit, it took 4 -5 years to get out “. In general, continues Crisanti, “there are hundreds of thousands of cases of Dengue a year in the world. And it is a disease that has a moderate mortality, it can also manifest itself in a very serious form. Singapore usually has a number of cases for very low year. This upsurge that they have registered may also be due to the fact that with Covid restrictions, disinfection programs may not have been carried out as in previous years. In Singapore I can assure you that they have an obsessive attention to disinfection: every time that there is a case of them sweeping the whole area. Lockdowns and restrictions may have somehow affected the level of control, “he speculates. The alarm launched by the World Health Organization (WHO) on the risk of outbreaks in new areas other than the usual ones, “is not an alarm launched yesterday – points out the virologist -. The problem is that Aedes mosquitoes, unlike Anopheles which transmit malaria, are invasive species and among the Aedes there is also the Albopictus which is the tiger mosquito and which in recent years has colonized several European countries. Fortunately, the latter is not a good vector of Dengue “. But other Aedes could make their way. “For example, there are cases of recent identification of other Aedes mosquito species in Italy, including japonicus and koreicus,” the Japanese and Korean mosquitoes. “The vectoring capacity of these mosquito species is still not very well known. But surely Aedes mosquitoes have very high potential.” What can research do? “There are innovative control techniques on Aedes that rely on genetic incompatibility or release of sterile mosquitoes. It could be a strategy for the future. A lot of progress has been made in controlling these mosquitoes with non-insecticide-based approaches,” concludes Crisanti. .