Degradation of insecticides used for indoor spraying in malaria control and possible solutions.

Background: The insecticide dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (DDT) is widely used in indoor residual spraying (IRS) for malaria control owing to its longer residual efficacy in the field compared to other World Health Organization (WHO) alternatives. Suitable stabilization to render these alternative insecticides longer lasting could provide a less controversial and more acceptable and effective alternative insecticide formulations than DDT.

Methods: This study sought to investigate the reasons behind the often reported longer lasting behaviour of DDT by exposing all the WHO approved insecticides to high temperature, high humidity and ultra-violet light.

Enantioanalysis of (-)butaclamol using vancomycin and teicoplanin as chiral selectors.

Butaclamol is an antipsychotic drug used in the treatment of schizophrenia. The macrocyclic antibiotics, vancomycin and teicoplanin, are proposed as chiral selectors for the design of the enantioselective, potentiometric membrane electrodes (EPMEs) for the assay of (-)butaclamol. The slopes of the electrodes are near-Nernstian for the assay of (-) butaclamol with linear concentration ranges between 10(-10) and 10(-7) mol/L and between 10(-9) and 10(-7) mol/L for vancomycin and teicoplanin based EPMEs.