A possible silver bullet for no-see-ums

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January 16, 2025

A midge on human skin. (Photo: iiievgeniy / iStock / Getty Images Plus / getty images)

A midge on human skin. (Photo: iiievgeniy / iStock / Getty Images Plus / getty images)

No-see-ums, also known as biting midges (Culicoides spp.), are small flies that are carriers of several diseases that affect animals. In recent months, they also have been identified as the source of an outbreak of the Oropouche virus, which can be fatal in humans. While the virus hasn’t taken root yet in the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are warning overseas travelers to take precautions for no-see-ums as they would for mosquitoes. (Source)

The Entomological Society of America (ESA) recently published a study in the November 2024 issue of the Journal of Medical Entomology on how silver nanoparticles could control no-see-um larvae. Per an article on ESA’s Entomology Today blog, “silver nanoparticles are cargo that can be deployed on their own or attached to a carrier. They’ve been shown to have insecticidal impacts on a number of insects, ranging from tobacco cutworms to psyllids to mosquitoes. Their toxicity is thought to be from damage to proteins and DNA and cellular death from the creation of reactive oxygen species.”

The blog post notes how the researchers experimented with plain silver nanoparticles, sorghum-polymer particles, and a silver-sorghum hybrid. “The larvae chowed down on sorghum for a week without any apparent toxic effects, but both the silver nanoparticles and the silver-sorghum hybrids killed larvae,” according to the blog post. The study serves only as a proof of concept, but the researchers hope it will take us one step closer to effectively controlling these notoriously hard-to-kill pests.

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