In sub-Saharan Africa, mothers often carry their babies on their backs in colorful cotton wraps called lesu. Could treating these wraps with insecticide help prevent malaria? Dr. Ross Boyce discusses a groundbreaking study in Uganda showing that permethrin-treated wraps significantly reduce malaria in infants – and further, what this could mean for protecting the youngest and most vulnerable children from this often fatal disease.

A new study in rural western Uganda finds that treating baby-carrying cloths, or lesu, with an insecticide with modest repellent effect significantly reduces malaria infections in young children.

Transcript

In many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, mothers carry their young children on their backs in colorful cotton wraps called lesu. Could treating these cloths with insecticide reduce malaria transmission?

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine explored this question in rural western Uganda, where malaria is transmitted year-round. Researchers enrolled 400 mothers with children aged six to 18 months.

Using a blinded randomized placebo-controlled trial design, half received lesu treated with permethrin, a commonly-used insecticide. The other half received untreated cloths. All participants also received insecticide-treated bed nets.

Every two weeks for 24 weeks, the mothers and children visited local health centers to check for fever and undergo malaria testing. The results were striking: children carried in permethrin-treated lesu represented 66% fewer malaria cases – 0.73 cases per 100 people compared with 2.13 in the control group.

The findings suggest that insecticide-treated lesu – much like treated bed nets – could offer an effective new tool particuarly against outdoor biting for a highly vulnerable population - children under 5 years of age - in sub-Saharan Africa.

Source

Permethrin-Treated Baby Wraps for the Prevention of Malaria [NEJM]

About The Podcast

The Johns Hopkins Malaria Minute podcast is produced by the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute to highlight impactful malaria research and to share it with the global community.

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