Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 18, 1990 TAG: 9003182451
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium
"The basic science is pretty much done. Now we're waiting to see what needs to be done as far as getting it approved and marketed," said the 56-year-old Old Dominion University biology professor.
Sonenshine, a student of the tick for 30 years, has developed a small plastic bead containing a pesticide and two aphrodisiacs - called pheromones - naturally produced by the tick.
The idea is to saturate an animal, a cow for instance, with the beads. The pheromones attract the male tick to the beads where they come in contact with the pesticide and die. "We're taking advantage of a biological weakness to bring the pesticide to the tick," he said.
Sonenshine said the female tick crawls on an animal and attaches itself to feed on the animal's blood.
The male will attach and feed, and then move about looking for a female with which to breed. Instead, on a treated animal, the male tick finds one of Sonenshine's plastic decoys and the poison.
"The females stay unbred and eventually succumb to the pesticide in the nearby decoys," he said. "We've interrupted the breeding cycle."
Sonenshine said the process probably will be used on food-producing animals rather than pets. "I don't think too many pet owners would be willing to have their pets walking around with pellets stuck to their fur," he said.
Normally, large animals are sprayed or dipped with a pesticide solution. The stress of the process interrupts their weight gain, and in some parts of the world where tick infestation is particularly heavy the spraying or dipping must be done on a weekly basis.
According to Sonenshine, ticks create an economic loss of $7 billion to $9 billion annually worldwide.
The fingertip-sized pellets are chemically adhered to the animal's fur.
Sonenshine declined to speak about the method of adhesion, but said he was in the process of perfecting it. The pellets could be sprayed on the animals. Laboratory tests indicate the pellets can be effective for nearly a year.
"We're ready to start field testing the system. It will use less pesticide than the current method and will be less stressful to the animals. It ought to save money for the producer," he said.
S.D. Fulz, a veterinary parasitologist and researcher for the Upjohn Co. in Kalamazoo, Mich., said pheromone technology has been used on other insects. "No question, it could be transferred to tick pests, but for the most part it hasn't been used a whole lot on animals," he said.
"I've got a lot of reservations about the practicality. Sometimes what you find in the lab is totally different from the results in the field. But he [Sonenshine] is perhaps the one with the greatest amount of expertise [about the tick]," Fulz said.
Several million ticks have been born and died in Sonenshine's laboratory over the course of his research. Special containers are used to house the breeding insects. Currently, Sonenshine is using seven of the more than 800 species of ticks found in the world for his research.
by CNB