By Marie Rosenthal, MS
The key to a man's heart may be his stomach, but so is the key to the mosquito that can infect that person. The midgut of a mosquito may be fundamental in preventing mosquito-borne diseases like Zika and dengue (PLoS Pathog 2018;14[2]:e1006853. doi: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1006853).
A mosquito’s ability to replicate and transmit a virus depends on the metabolic environment of tissues in its midgut: the primary site of infection. By targeting the sphingolipid pathway,