Have you ever gone on your phone for 5 minutes and ended up scrolling for an hour? I certainly have. These behaviours aren’t random, they are linked to how the brain is wired. One of the chemicals associated with this is dopamine. This is a hormone which is involved in motivation, learning and habits not just pleasure, it can affect our everyday behaviour.
Every year, an estimated 100-400 million people are infected with dengue virus worldwide, with about 400,000 annual deaths. It is one of the fastest-growing infectious diseases on the planet, fuelled by urbanisation and climate change pushing Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, the primary vector, into new territories. However, despite its scale, the tools available to fight dengue have remained frustratingly limited. Vaccines have struggled to work reliably across all four dengue serotypes, chemical repellents offer only modest protection, and community-based source reduction has shown little sustained impact in clinical trials. Scientists needed a fundamentally new approach.
