According to a recent study, the incubation period of malaria parasites is impacted by climate change, which may hasten the disease’s spread. The study, which was carried out in Chennai by researchers from many Indian institutions, focused on how changing construction materials and higher temperatures impact the spread of malaria.
Female Anopheles mosquitoes carry parasites like Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax, which cause malaria. The study discovered that rising temperatures have shortened these parasites’ incubation period, or the amount of time needed for the parasites to grow inside mosquitoes. In particular, the incubation period of malaria parasites was reduced from 7.01 days to 6.35 days in houses with asbestos roofs. Over a ten-year period, the average interior daily temperature range (DTR) rose from 4.3°C to 12.62°C, causing this shift. The highest temperatures were reported in buildings covered by asbestos, with summertime averages indoors reaching 34.92°C ± 1.79°C and outdoors reaching 32.91°C ± 1.90°C.
Although not as much, the incubation period did shorten in buildings with concrete roofs. Over the same period, the indoor DTR climbed from 1.93°C to 2.95°C, although it decreased from 7.10 days to 6.96 days. The study found that the outdoor DTR for concrete structures did not significantly vary.
The shortening of the incubation period is important since even a slight reduction in this time might hasten the development of parasites in mosquitoes and hence raise the risk of malaria transmission. Both indoor and outdoor incubation times dropped in 2021–22 during the pre-monsoon season, suggesting that the parasites are developing more quickly than in 2012–2013. Because of this quicker development, the disease could spread to humans more quickly through infected mosquitoes.
Researchers from ICMR institutes collected and examined mosquito samples in Chennai’s Besant Nagar for their study. The main malaria vector, Anopheles stephensi, was less abundant among adult mosquitoes, but other species, such as Culex quinquefasciatus and Stegomyia aegypti, which spread dengue, chikungunya, and filaria, were present, the researchers said.
The study’s overall findings emphasize how critical it is to address climate change and how it affects vector-borne illnesses. Public health initiatives can be more effectively designed to reduce the elevated risk of malaria transmission brought on by rising temperatures by taking these dynamics into account.
SOURCE :
TIMES OF INDIA
