Every year, mosquito-borne diseases cut short more than a million lives across the globe, outpacing every other animal threat to humanity. The rising toll has public-health teams scrambling for fresh combat tools, especially as traditional chemical sprays lose their edge.
That loss stems from two hard truths. First, the very pyrethroid insecticides that once worked wonders now linger in soil and water, nudging delicate ecosystems off balance.
Second, mosquitoes adapt fast. Larvae soaking in tainted puddles and adults drifting through treated neighborhoods increasingly shrug off doses that once killed them.
Controlling the pests at their waterborne stage is vital, yet options that stay potent without harming everything else remain limited.
Cannabis, CBD, and mosquitoes
Recent research published in the journal Insects points to a solution hiding in plain sight: the hemp plant, Cannabis sativa.
After air-drying and grinding ordinary hemp leaves, scientists at The Ohio State University led by Erick Martinez Rodriguez extracted cannabidiol (CBD) and added the concentrate to cups of water teeming with yellow fever mosquito larvae.
Within 48 hours, both a strain that laughs at common insecticides and a non-resistant strain were wiped out.
“Mosquitoes are one of the deadliest animals in the world, mainly because as adults they serve as vectors of disease,” Rodriguez explained.
From resistance to vulnerability
Two important findings jumped out. The first was total mortality: every mosquito larva exposed to sufficient CBD died by the two-day mark, regardless of its genetic armor.
The second was efficiency. While industrial chemicals often push resistance higher with every generation, CBD’s effect cut straight through those defenses. Doses varied, but even modest concentrations proved lethal to all mosquito larvae.
“If you compare the amount of hemp extract needed to kill 50 % of the population to other synthetic conventional insecticides, it is on the high side, but when you compare it side by side to other natural extracts we have tested in our lab, only a relatively low amount is required to produce high mortality values in larvae,” said Martinez Rodriguez.
Hellbound and Down 