{"id":796856,"date":"2026-10-09T09:20:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T09:20:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/796856\/"},"modified":"2026-10-09T09:20:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T09:20:11","slug":"midges-role-in-spreading-disease-to-be-investigated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/796856\/","title":{"rendered":"Midges&#8217; role in spreading disease to be investigated"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Scientists say there are still major gaps in knowledge about UK mosquitoes and midges. They want to better understand how these insects spread diseases, what puts people and animals at risk, and how best to control them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Researchers hope the new project called Pamec (Preparing for and Mitigating the Impacts of Environmental Change on Insect-Borne Disease in the UK) will help answer some of these questions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The programme builds on the earlier Mosquito Scotland project, which looked at the risk posed by mosquitoes and mosquito-borne diseases across Scotland. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Dr Emilie Pondeville, of the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research, said the project would combine laboratory research with field studies carried out at locations across the UK.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Together this information will help inform new mathematical models that should enable us to better understand the current and future risks we face,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">She will lead the project alongside Heather Ferguson, Professor of Medical Entomology and Infectious Disease Ecology at the University of Glasgow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scientists say there are still major gaps in knowledge about UK mosquitoes and midges. They want to better&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":796857,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[59,102,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-796856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-gb","tag-health","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=796856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/796857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=796856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=796856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=796856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}