CONTEXT: When is Real-World Research done with randomised, double-blind study designs? Answer – when the patients involved are effectively an outcome measure. Despite the non-RWR headline title, this report of a study in Indonesia made the cut because of the ground-breaking impact the approach may have on Dengue Fever. Researchers released mosquitoes infected with the Dengue virus-fighting bacteria Wolbachia into areas of an Indonesian city. They then compared Dengue Fever infection rates among people living in these areas against “control” areas where the indigenous mosquito population were allowed to carry on as usual. The results showed an amazing 77% drop in infections in the “treated” areas. Big news in the fight against mosquito borne diseases. However, I would love to have been at the ethics committee meeting that approved this study.
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1. “The lab results showed that only 67 people (or 2.3 percent) in the intervention clusters where Wolbachia-carrying mosquitoes had been introduced had clinically diagnosed dengue fever, compared to 9.4 percent of people (318 cases) in the control clusters.”
2. “The good news is that in recent years, an experimental approach has shown promise in slowing down the disease’s spread: the introduction of a bacterium called Wolbachia into mosquito populations.”
3. “Already in Australia’s far north Queensland, dengue has been basically eradicated thanks to the World Mosquito Program’s Wolbachia trial.”
4. “The study also found that 86 percent fewer people who lived in intervention clusters ended up in hospital as a result of fever: 13 hospitalizations compared to 102 in the control areas. “This is a great success for the people of Yogyakarta,” says team member Adi Utarini from the World Mosquito Program and the University of Gadjah Mada in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.”
5. “In far north Queensland, Australia, it only took four years for no dengue transmissions to be recorded following the release of Wolbachia mosquitoes in the Cairns region; however, it’s worth noting the disease was never endemic there.”