A revolutionary new breakthrough in malaria treatment has been developed by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Malaria Research Institute in Baltimore, USA.
It is a bacterium capable of rendering ineffective the parasitic action of anopheles mosquitoes, which cause the transmission of plasmodium falciparum, which is the cause of malaria in the blood.
The study, published in the school's medical research journal, reveals how the bacterium can be used: by genetically modifying some "normal" mosquitoes and putting them into environments where anopheles abound, especially those with endemic situations.
The team of researchers found that this bacterial strain can spread rapidly and persist for a long time among mosquitoes carrying malaria. 
A genetically modified version of the bacterial strain strongly suppresses the development of the malaria parasite, making mosquitoes much less likely to transmit parasites to humans.  In addition, another group of researchers found that a second genetic modification of the bacterium may change mosquito mating preferences. Research has therefore established that since malaria is spread by female anopheles mosquitoes, an effective way to prevent malaria, in addition to traditional approaches such as bed nets and insecticides, is to modify mosquitoes so that they are no longer able to spread the parasite to humans.