Study summary
Performance of the Plant-Based Repellent TT-4302 Against Mosquitoes in the Laboratory and Field and Comparative Efficacy to 16 Mosquito Repellents Against Aedes aegypti
Bissinger BW, Schmidt JP, Owens JJ, Mitchell SM, Kennedy MK
Read the original paper- Study type
- Field Trial
- Year
- 2014
- Species tested
- Aedes aegypti, Anopheles quadrimaculatus, Aedes albopictus
- Published in
- Journal of Medical Entomology 51(2):392–399
- Evidence strength
- Well-supported evidence
How it was tested
Arm-in-cage trials against Aedes aegypti and Anopheles quadrimaculatus and a North Carolina field trial against Aedes albopictus measured percentage repellency at 30-minute intervals against a 90% threshold.
Summary
A test of TT-4302, a 5% geraniol formulation, against mosquitoes in the lab and field, benchmarked against 16 commercial repellents and 15% DEET. The headline is that this geraniol product outlasted everything else tested, though the DEET comparator was a low 15%.
Key findings
TT-4302 was still repelling Aedes aegypti 94.7% five hours after application, longer than any other product, while 15% DEET dropped below 90% at about three hours and eleven products failed within 30 minutes. Against Anopheles it beat 15% DEET at six hours (95% versus 72%), and in the field it reached 100% versus DEET's 78% at five hours. The important caveat: the benchmark was 15% DEET, not high-concentration DEET, and the authors have a commercial interest in the product.
Limitations
Only four volunteers per treatment, a single field site, a proprietary formulation, a low-dose DEET comparator, and authors tied to the product, so the beats-DEET framing means beating low-concentration DEET.