Scientists in Australia and China have found a new way to fight dengue. Till now there is no vaccine or cure for dengue fever. Their study revealed that infecting the Aedes aegypti mosquito species that carry the dengue virus mosquitoes with engineered bacteria known as Wolbachia can cut their lives short and reduce the probability of transmitting dengue and other diseases.

Researchers found that infected mosquitoes lived half as long as uninfected mosquitoes. Wolbachia bacteria allowed the mosquito to live long enough to reproduce and spread to its young, but not to mature to the stage when it is capable of transmitting dengue. Moreover infected females pass on the bacterium, but infected males could only produce offspring with infected females, giving two powerful means by which a mosquito population can very quickly become infected with the parasite.

Scott O'Neill, head of University of Queensland's School of Biological Science said: "If we can introduce this into populations it should move the management of dengue fever from an outbreak management paradigm to a prevention paradigm."