protection of permethrin-treated military uniforms against natural population of Culex bitaeniohynchus, Culex ritaeniorhynchus and Culex perexiguus [Diptera: Culicidae]

ABSTRACT

Personnel of military forces have close contact with the environment and can be bitten by insects and exposed to the related diseases, more than other people. The importance of Culex mosquitoes for mankind is in fact, its biting and nuisance, especially at sleeping time. In recent years, great progresses have occurred in protecting people, especially military personnel, against arthropod bites and vector-borne disease, using treated clothes with permethrin. In this study, the protection of permethrin-treated military uniforms against 3 species of Culex in a rural field of Iran has been examined. In this study, six types of current military uniforms of Iran were treated by permethrin [0.125mg permethrin [Al]/cm[2] and examined against the biting of natural population mosquitoes of rural areas of Kazeroon, Fars Province, south of Iran, namely Culex. Eight volunteers were selected for this study. Six of them put on the treated uniforms and the other two wore the untreated uniforms. All the subjects participated in the night biting test for eight active nights of July 2004. There was no significant difference in the protection of different treated uniforms against mosquitoes biting. The relative protection level of treated uniforms, in comparison with untreated ones, was about 88/2%. The protection percentage of treated uniforms for different species of mosquitoes, in comparison with untreated ones, was calculated through determining the species of captured mosquitoes, separately from case and control subjects. The results showed that the relative protection percent of treated uniforms against species of Culex bitaeniohynchus, Cx. tritaeniorhynchus and Cx.perexiguus were 72.7, 87 and 89.8, respectively. The results of chemical analysis with High performance Thin Layer Chromatography [HPTLC] method, before and after field test, showed that in two weeks of study, there hasn't been any significant decrease in the amount of uniforms' permethrin. According to this study, using of permethrin-treated clothing is a useful technique, which makes a considerable protection against insects biting. Therefore using this technique is recommended for protecting military personnel or civilians, as an effective method against hematophagous insects