The satirist, Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) wrote in 1733 that “Hobbes clearly proves, that every creature lives in a state of war by nature.” While the arboviruses and their mosquito vectors can hardly be described as leviathans, they continue to have an impact on the health of many millions living in the tropics.

The Arbovirus Infections unit for FACTM pt 1 study is now complete. Lecture notes for both modules (FACTM Arbo 1, and FACTM Arbo 2) can be found via this site. The live version takes place in the Emergency Department seminar room, Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital,  at 06:50hr next Tuesday (11th May, 2010). Further details on the Calendar function of this site (right hand contents bar). Sources of supplementary information on arbovirus infections can be found on the Priobe Net.

Medical Entomology for Students. 4th edn. M Service. Cambridge University Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-521-70928-6

Medical Entomology for Students

Mike Service brings his trademark clarity to this fourth edition of his highly regarded introductory textbook of medical entomology. It contains core subject material that has been tought to generations of DTM&H candidates.

Entomology is a very visual branch of the natural sciences and benefits from illustration. One of the strengths of this text is the careful choice of line diagrams that reinforce key differentiating features of disease vectors. In the 4th edition, colour figures have been added to support insect recognition skills.

Other modifications have been made for the fourth edition, particularly in recognition of recent changes in vector control. New transmission cycles for West Nile and Japanese encephalitis viruses have also been included.

The author’s emphasis on clinical and public health relevance runs from cover to cover and has led him, for example, to simplify the nomenclature used for Aedes mosquitoes. He is at pains to remind readers that this is a necessarily selective approach more suited to a subject matter primer, than to an exhaustive reference text. However, the enduring relevance of this book throughout the tropics is a measure of its continuing success.

This book has been recommended as core reading for the FACTM pt 1 exam.

Chapters:  introduction to mosquitoes, Anopheline mosquitoes, Culicine mosquitoes, black-flies, phlebotomine sand-flies, biting midges, horse-flies, tsetse-flies, house-flies and stable-flies, flies and myiasis, fleas, sucking lice, bedbus, triatomine bugs, cockroaches, soft ticks, hard ticks, scabies mites, scrub typhus mites, miscellaneous mites.

Features of adult female Anopheles mosquito

(redrawn & modified from M Service, Medical Entomology for Students, 4th edn, CUP, 2008)

After a week’s frenetic germ-hunting and malaria-mugging, μGnome celebrated a weekend off by getting out his drawing set again to sketch diagrams of malaria-bearing mosquitoes. So now we have our first set of mosquito recognition charts – for getting to know enemy aircraft. Well, if that works for you, why not run with it?  More charts will be released as we work our way through the FACTM pt 1 revision series.

If this whets your appetite for more, these figures were redrawn from Mike Service’s excellent Medical Entomology for Students, now in its fourth edition. The μGnome remembers using an earlier edition on the long path to μgnomic wisdom. While you’re waiting for the book to arrive, you could check out the Wikipedia post on mosquitoes.

Life in the Fast Lane has finally recognised Ronald Ross’s contribution to our understanding of malaria with a Crazy Bug Hunter feature on the man who finally worked out the missing links in the malaria cycle.

The μgnome points out that he would not have got there without the prior work of Manson, Laveran and Grassi (he shared the 1902 Nobel prize with the latter) and possibly Theobald Smith’s ground breaking work on vector-borne diseases.

Micrognauts should look forward to future posts on a variety of vector-borne infections, but will need to concentrate their efforts on malaria for the time being, especially if they are preparing for the FACTM part 1 exam, starting with sample questions.