Endectocides as a complementary intervention in the malaria control program: A systematic review
Creators: name: Jafari, Abbas
name: Gholizadeh, Saber
name: Levchenko, Mikhail
name: Bahlol Rahimi
name: Khaligh, Fereshteh Ghahveshi
name: Silivanova, Elena
Publisher: name: Open Science Framework
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: Entomology
subject: Life Sciences
subject: Complementary Intervention in Malaria Control

description: Malaria is a parasitic infectious disease of poverty and one of the major global public health problems [1]. Long-lasting insecticidal nets (LLINs), IRS, artemisinin combination therapy, transmission-blocking vaccines the deployment of single, low-dose primaquine, and antimalarial drugs are several WHO-recommended strategies in reducing the burden of malaria[2, 3]. The widespread and sustained use of pesticides to malaria control have been resulted varied environmental and entomological issues mainly the selection of Anopheles mosquitoes for resistance to the primary vector control strategies [4, 5]. Systemic insecticides are favorable solution against insecticide resistant and zoophilic/zoophagic mosquitoes [6]. Systemic insecticides are applied in veterinary, horticulture [7], and recent medical entomology [8]. Reports on the development of resistance to systemic insecticides in pests are scarce [9, 10]. Among the 21 vector control tools evaluated in a review (shrinkingthemalariamap.org), less than 10 were supported by Phase II or Phase I evaluation of ivermectin, fipronil, and eprinomectin as endectocide administration in humans/animals, showing the rich pipeline of research into them at earlier stages of evaluation [11]. Endectocides are drugs applied directly to hosts to kill endoparasites and ectoparasites, mainly blood-feeding arthropods [12]. Although being used for the control of nematodes in humans and other vertebrates, endectocides can be toxic to Anopheles spp. when mosquitoes feed on a host recently received these drugs [13]. There are various advantages for systemic insecticides, including commercially available and easily accessible, relatively inexpensive, easy to administer in oral formulations, long-lasting, circulate uniformly in the blood for consistent vector uptake, have good safety, collateral benefits to treated animals [14]. However, the main concern in wider scale application of them is related to the risk assessment of systemic insecticides in ecosystem functioning and services. There are several examples on the negative impact of these compounds on decomposition, nutrient cycling, soil respiration, and invertebrate population [15]. The role of livestocks in malaria epidemiology is diverting malaria vectors to dead-end host and prevent parasite amplification by zooprophylaxis [16]. For this purpose, it is necessary that animals kept close to the man, therefore, it can increase malaria transmission by zoopotentiation, increasing numbers of mosquitoes by keeping animals close to human [16, 17] in arias where cattle production is semi-intensive or semi-extensive. However, Social local factors in animal husbandry and scale of animal husbandry, and subsequent influence on the potential use of the endectocides need to be consider. The use of endectocides treated cattle as complementary intervention highly attractive in areas where human and animals are close together, especially when the malaria mosquito is zoophagic such as An. arabiensis [18]. In the current review, published papers related to the application of systemic insecticides and endectocides for malaria vectors and parasites and their potential role as a new intervention for malaria elimination are discussed.