In 2000, 22,000 French military personnel were deployed overseas. The French military health service implemented a vector control strategy including personal protection by the use of permethrin preimpregnated battlefield uniforms (BFUs) and the application on the skin of a topical repellent (50% DEET). In 2000, French forces used an industrial process to impregnate cloth with permethrin by soak...

Twenty-one commercial insect repellent products, including 12 botanical, 6 DEET-based, and 3 synthetic organics, were evaluated as larvicides and as oviposition deterrents of Aedes albopictus. Ten of the 12 botanical products at 0.1% concentration provided 57-100% mortality of laboratory-reared 4th-stage Ae. albopictus larvae at 24 h after treatment. Five of the 6 DEET-based products and 3 synt...

Four synthetic mosquito repellents (Autan [10% KBR3023], IR3535 [7.5%], Off! [15% deet], Skinsations [7% deet]) and eight natural (primarily plant extracts and/or essential oils) product-based repellents (Bite Blocker [2% soybean oil], ByGone, GonE!, Natrapel [10% citronella], Neem Aura, Sunswat, MosquitoSafe [25% geraniol], and Repel [26% p-menthane-3,8-diol]) were tested in the laboratory aga...

The aim of the currrent investigation was to evaluate (a) the toxicity of three pyrethroids (deltamethrin, lambda-cyhalothrin, and tetramethrin); (b) the effect of these insecticides on the locomotor activity; and (c) the repellent effect of N,N-diethyl-m-toluamide (DEET) on two deltamethrin-resistant strains of Triatoma infestans from Argentina (El Chorro and La Toma), and one susceptible stra...

Emerging vector-borne diseases have become a concern for travelers and nontravelers alike. Although Ebola has dominated recent headlines, tropical arboviruses such as dengue and chikungunya have more quietly reached the United States. Local transmission of chikungunya virus was first documented in the United States in July 2014, and local spread of dengue has occurred in Florida, Texas, and Haw...

A modular and novel assay system for rapid mass screening of chemical compounds for contact irritant and spatial repellent actions against adult mosquitoes is described. The responses of Aedes aegypti to various concentrations of 3 topical repellents, deet, Bayrepel, and SS220, were evaluated. At treatment concentrations > or = 25 nmol/cm2 of SS220, mosquitoes exhibited significant contact irri...

Despite shortcomings, N,N-Diethyl-3-methylbenzamide (DEET) has remained the gold-standard of insect repellents for >60 years. There are significant impediments to finding improved substitutes because the molecular targets causing repellency are unclear, new chemistries will require significant human-safety testing, and predicted costs for development are exorbitant. Here we identify shared stru...

The modulation of insect behavior for the purpose of controlling the spread of infectious diseases has been the task of a few insect repellents for which the mechanistic modes of action on odorant receptors (ORs) are unclear. Here, we study the effects of the repellents DEET and IR3535, and a novel OR co-receptor (Orco) agonist on odorant-evoked currents in Xenopus oocytes expressing two subtyp...

A naturally occurring sesquiterpene, isolongifolenone, derivatives of which have been used extensively as ingredients in the cosmetics industry, was discovered to effectively repel blood-feeding arthropods that are important disease vectors. We show that (-)-isolongifolenone deters the biting of the mosquitoes, Aedes aegypti (L.) and Anopheles stephensi Liston, more effectively than the widely ...