Written by Charlie Quigg
An international team of chemists has developed a green method for creating odour attractants to trap the insects that spread African sleeping sickness.
Sleeping sickness or African trypanosomiasis is transmitted by tsetse flies and is a threat to millions of people, and their livestock, across sub-Saharan Africa. Trapping these flies can reduce the number of sleeping sickness cases. Unfortunately, the odour attractants that draw the flies in are often prohibitively expensive – barring buffalo urine, which has unfortunate hygienic and olfactory detractions – limiting their use…
Tsetse flies feed on the blood of vertebrate animals © Image Quest Marine/Alamy
Interested to know more?
Read the full article by Charlie Quigg here
Read the research article in GC:
Synthesis of tsetse fly attractants from a cashew nut shell extract by isomerising metathesis
S. Baader, P.E. Podsiadly, D.J. Cole Hamilton and L.J. Goossen
Green Chem., 2014, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C4GC01269K
