Evaluation and application of repellent-treated uniform/clothing and textiles against vector mosquitoes

Mosquito-borne illnesses such as malaria and dengue fever continue to cause harm and death to humans on a global scale. Prevention of arthropod bites is one of the most basic defense strategies to prevent the transmission of pathogens, which occurs when an arthropod takes a blood-meal through its bite. Prevention of bites is dependent upon effective arthropod repellents for skin and clothing. While skin arthropod repellents are often compounds that are nonlethal to target organisms, clothing arthropod repellents are derived from the insecticide class. The primary purpose of a repellent on clothing is to repel an arthropod from the surface prior to being able to bite. Therefore, the most appropriate assays for measuring the repellency of insecticide-treated clothing involve measurement of the ability of the system to prevent bites. This chapter discusses the need for repellent-treated clothing, the development of a bite protection (or bite prevention) protocol for evaluating US military fabrics, the protocol used for registration of a new treatment (etofenprox) for fabrics, and data from some recent studies on civilian clothing.