Using Bite Diary app to assess mosquito bite exposure.
Do you know how often you get bitten by mosquitoes per day? What about people in Brazil, Norway, or Ghana?
Mosquito bites are not only nuisances, they can cause diseases or even death. World Health Organization estimated that malaria alone cause over 600,000 deaths in 2021 (a majority of them in the African continent, where the disease is most prevalent).
So far we have no data on mosquito bite exposure rate in human populations. This is the average number of mosquito bites a person may receive per day, which vary depend on where they live, what they wear, the time of the year, or the lifestyles. This lack of data is unfortunate because the bite exposure rate is among the most important representation of disease risk.
This is why we created a research tool called Bite Diary. It is a mobile app that helps people keep track of mosquito bites they may receive throughout their days. It is used in research projects where research participants record the occurrence of mosquito bites for a limited amount of time (e.g., 1 week). We also provide education and training to research participants so they can better protect themselves against mosquito-borne diseases.
We are looking for volunteers!
We are conducting a research study to test our newly created Bite Diary. This project will also help us understand how often, when, and in what setting people get bitten by mosquitoes. This knowledge can better inform mosquito control activities to reduce mosquito-borne disease risk in human populations. Volunteers will participate in a short educational workshop, use the Bite Diary app for 7 days to record mosquito bites, and fill out a short online questionnaire to provide feedback at the end.
Are there any risks?
There is no risk. You will be asked to report mosquito bites you already experience in your normal daily life. We will offer you a bottle of mosquito repellent free of charge at the beginning of the study.
Click here to read the informed consent document for this pilot project.
Preliminary results are here!!
We are still in the process of finalizing our data collection but here are some initial first look of the results. We will continue to post more information as we are finishing up data analysis
Thank you to all participants for helping us collecting the data.
The graph on the left shows the number of participants (on y-axis) that reported different numbers of bites during the one week monitoring period (on x-axis).
A lot of people (41%) reported no bites at all during that one week. On average, participants experience 0.63 bite per day. This is the same as saying each person got bitten twice every 3 days. |
A majority of the bites occurred outdoors. We are still analyzing data on the activities that participants were performing while experiencing these mosquito bites.
The graph on the left shows that if people got bitten outside, they tended to experience higher bites than when they got bitten indoors. This is like because there are more mosquitoes outside than inside homes in Florida. |