Bruno Reis

Homeopathic and larvicide effect of Eucalyptus cinerea essential oil against Aedes aegypti

ABSTRACT The aim of this work to study the homeopathic and larvicide effect of Eucalyptus cinerea essential oil on Aedes aegypti. Essential oil had high larvicide effect with LC50 and LC90 of 0.38 and 0.27 mg mL -1 , respectively. Generally, the homeopathy of essential oil affected the A. aegypti development stages. Dynamizations 6CH, 9CH and 12CH reduced the mean number of larvae when compared to that of control. Mean number of mosquitoes decreased through homeopathic dynamization 30CH. Results showed that E. cinerea essential oil was highly promising and could be used in public health system for the control of A. aegypti. Key words : Ultra-diluted; secondary metabolism; biomass; homeopathic drugs * Author for correspondence: cmbonato@uem.br INTRODUCTION Viral infection dengue, transmitted by the mosquito of the genus Aedes , is one of the main worldwide concerns in public health (Tare et al., 2004; Furtado et al., 2005), especially in tropical and subtropical countries where its incidence is very high (Cavalcanti et al., 2004). An estimated 1.3 billion people were infected with dengue according to WHO (2004). In tropical countries, Aedes aegypti is the main transmitter insect of dengue (Furtado et al., 2005), Dengue infestations have repeatedly occurred in Brazil during the last decade (Cavalcanti et al., 2004). For this, the etiological agent is an arbovirus and the main vector is the Aedes aegypti mosquito which has been found in more than 3600 municipalities in Brazil (Cives, 2002). Control of the culicide by insecticides such as temephos, malathion and phenitrothion has been the main policy adopted by public health policies (Furtado et al., 2005). However, the indiscriminate use of synthetic insecticides in agriculture and in public policy programs during the last fifty years has established resistance to insecticides, environmental pollution and contamination of humans and other living beings (Thomas et al., 2004). Resistance of the dipteran insect to conventional insecticides (Furtado et al., 2005) has been reported in different countries (Wirth and Georghiou, 1999), including Brazil (Macoris et al., 2003). Studies with natural products such as insecticides and larvicides have been undertaken for the control of mosquito Aedes , albeit with different results (Rahuman et al. 2000, Markouk et al. 2000, Ciccia et al., 2000, Tsao et al., 2002, Silva et al., 2004; Furtado et al., 2005). There are no reports in the literature on studies investigating the effects of homeopathic medicine on A. aegypti , although