EntomoScience

Alors que le coronavirus balayait le monde, Adi Utarini et ses collègues se sont concentrés sur une autre maladie qui ravage l'Amérique latine et touche près de 400 milions de personnes par an : la dengue. Adi Utarini est à l'origine d'un essai de relâche de moustiques génétiquement modifiés dans une grande ville indonésienne qui a permis de réduire de 77 % les cas de dengue. Les travaux d'Adi Utarini ont débuté en 2011 mais la scientifique a bataillé durant des années pour faire accepter son projet. Les moustiques modifiés restent aujourd'hui l'une des stratégies les plus prometteuses dans la lutte contre les maladies transmises par les moustiques (Zika, dengue, paludisme...)

 

Les 10 scientifiques qui ont fait 2020 selon Nature

Par Céline Deluzarche, 01.01.2021

 

• Nature’s 10: ten people who helped shape science in 2020, 15.12.2020 https://www.nature.com/immersive/d41586-020-03435-6/index.html

"As the COVID-19 coronavirus swept the world this year, Adi Utarini was focused on battling a different deadly infection: dengue fever. In August, her team reported a big victory that could point the way towards defeating this disease — which afflicts up to 400 million people per year — and possibly others carried by mosquitoes, too.

 

Utarini and her colleagues have managed to cut cases of dengue fever by 77% in parts of a large Indonesian city by releasing mosquitoes that had been modified to stop them from transmitting the virus. Epidemiologists hailed the result as staggering — and a long-sought win against a virus that has plagued many countries, especially lower-income nations in Asia, Africa and South America.

 

“It was a very big relief,” says Utarini, a public-health researcher at Gadjah Mada University (GMU) in Yogyakarta — where the trial took place — and the study’s lead scientist in Indonesia." 

 

• The mosquito strategy that could eliminate dengue, Nature, 27.08.2020 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02492-1

 

• World Mosquito Program’s Wolbachia method dramatically reduces dengue incidence in randomised controlled trial in Yogyakarta, Indonesia | World Mosquito Program
  https://www.worldmosquitoprogram.org/en/news-stories/media-releases/world-mosquito-programs-wolbachia-method-dramatically-reduces-dengue

 

[Image] Credit: Ed Wray for Nature