Key Points
- The insecticides that target disease-spreading mosquitoes are running into nature’s ultimate defense mechanism: evolution.
- Scientists reported Wednesday that mosquitoes in Cambodia and Vietnam increasingly carry a mutation that makes them resistant to a commonly deployed insecticide.
- The report, in the journal Science Advances, tells the story of Aedes aegypti, a vector for dengue, yellow fever, chikungunya, Zika and other diseases.
- The researchers found that in Cambodia and Vietnam, 78 percent of sampled mosquitoes had a mutation that, in laboratory studies, showed resistance to permethrin, which is part of a class of insecticides known as pyrethroids.
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