Abstract

In this study, six types of current military uniforms of Iran were treated by permethrin (0.125 mg permethrin AI cm-2) and examined against the biting of natural population mosquitoes of rural areas of kazeroon, Fars Province, south of Iran, namely Culex and Anopheles. Eight volunteers were selected for this study. Six of them put on the treated uniforms and the other two ones wore the untreated uniforms. All the subjects participated in the night biting test for eight active nights of July and August 2004. There was no significant difference in the protection of different treated uniforms against mosquitoes biting. In this study, the average number of biting among who wore untreated uniforms (controls) was 3.21 mosquito biting/min/person (192.8 h -1). This amount was 0.26 (15.6 h-1) for who wore treated uniforms (cases). The relative protection level of treated uniforms, in comparison with untreated ones, was about 91.9%. The protection percent of treated uniforms for different species of mosquitoes, in comparison with untreated ones, was calculated through determining the species of captured mosquitoes, separately from case and control subjects. The results showed that the relative protection percent of treated uniforms against species of Culex bitaeniohynchus, Cx. tritaeniorhynchus, Cx. perexiguus, Cx. theileri and An. stephensi was 72.7, 87, 89.8, 84.3 and 78.7, respectively. The results of chemical analysis with High Performance Thin Layer Chromatography (HPTLC) method, before and after field test, showed that in two weeks of study, there hasn't been any significant decrease in the amount of uniforms' permethrin. © 2006 Academic Journals Inc.