Nitisinone Makes Human Blood Lethal to Mosquitoes and Outlasts Ivermectin, Study Shows
taylorvich writes:
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-03-nitisinone-human-blood-lethal-mosquitoes.html
In the fight against malaria, controlling the mosquito population is crucial. Several methods are currently used to reduce mosquito numbers and malaria risk. One of these includes the antiparasitic medication ivermectin. When mosquitoes ingest blood containing ivermectin, it shortens the insect's lifespan and helps decrease the spread of malaria.
However, ivermectin has its own issues. Not only is it environmentally toxic, but also, when it is overused to treat people and animals with worm and parasite infections, resistance to ivermectin becomes a concern.
Now a study in Science Translational Medicine has identified another medication with the potential to suppress mosquito populations to help control malaria. Researchers found when patients take the drug nitisinone, their blood becomes deadly to mosquitoes.
"One way to stop the spread of diseases transmitted by insects is to make the blood of animals and humans toxic to these blood-feeding insects," said Lee R. Haines, associate research professor of biological sciences at the University of Notre Dame, honorary fellow at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and co-lead author of the study.
"Our findings suggest that using nitisinone could be a promising new complementary tool for controlling insect-borne diseases like malaria."
Typically, nitisinone is a medication for individuals with rare inherited diseases-such as alkaptonuria and tyrosinemia type 1-whose bodies struggle to metabolize the amino acid tyrosine. The medication works by blocking the enzyme 4-hydroxyphenylpyruvate dioxygenase (HPPD), preventing the build-up of harmful disease byproducts in the human body.
When mosquitoes drink blood that contains nitisinone, the drug also blocks this crucial HPPD enzyme in their bodies. This prevents the mosquitoes from properly digesting the blood, causing them to quickly die.
The researchers analyzed the nitisinone dosing concentrations needed for killing mosquitoes, and how those results would stack up against ivermectin, the gold standard ectoparasitic drug (medication that specifically targets ectoparasites such as mosquitoes).
"We thought that if we wanted to go down this route, nitisinone had to perform better than ivermectin," said Alvaro Acosta Serrano, professor of biological sciences at Notre Dame and co-corresponding author of the study.
"Indeed, nitisinone performance was fantastic; it has a much longer half-life in human blood than ivermectin, which means its mosquitocidal activity remains circulating in the human body for much longer. This is critical when applied in the field for safety and economical reasons."
More information: Lee Haines et al, Nitisinone's mosquitocidal properties hold promise for malaria control, Science Translational Medicine (2025). DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.adr4827.
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