 Karen Polson, a UWI postgraduate student was awarded the prestigious Professor David Picou Young Researcher Prize during the Caribbean Health Research Council Meeting held in April 2010. Karen has been a PhD student since 2003 in the Department of Life Sciences investigating “The potential impact of increased temperatures on insecticide resistance in Caribbean strains of the Dengue vector, Aedes aegypti.”
Three scientific papers were submitted to the Caribbean Health Research Council and all were accepted, two for oral presentation and one as a conference poster. The two oral presentations were “DDT and Pyrethroid resistance in Trinidad and Tobago strains of Aedes aegypti” and “Organophosphate resistance in Trinidadian strains of Aedes aegypti.”
The title of the poster presentation was the “Use of Biochemical Assays to Detect and Assess resistance in Trinidadian strains of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes.”
The potential impact of this study on temperature increases and insecticide resistance in the Aedes aegypti mosquito is important in the context of climate change and associated global warming. Results of this study can assist in the development of an early warning system for insecticide resistance, improvements in the management of insecticides and their associated resistance modalities.
The relevance of this work is not restricted to Trinidad and Tobago but to the wider Caribbean region especially as episodes of Dengue Haemorrhagic Fever (DHF) are increasing and are expected to be explosive in the next decade. The fact that there are no efficient vaccines which target all four dengue serotypes make vector control and the management of insecticide resistance more critical to our region and hemisphere.
Karen’s journey into the field of Medical Entomology began in her native Jamaica where she pursued a BSc degree in Zoology, majoring in Entomology and Parasitology at the Mona Campus.
On completion of her degree, she worked as the Scientific Officer in the Vector Control Unit from 1994-1997 at the Ministry of Health, Jamaica. In 1997, she took up a post at the Caribbean Epidemiology Centre (CAREC/PAHO/WHO) as the Senior Technologist in the Entomology Unit. After three years at CAREC, she was granted a year’s study leave to pursue an MSc in the Biology and Control of Disease Vectors at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University of London. She returned to continue working at CAREC in 2001 and shortly after began work towards a PhD degree. In 2007, Karen left CAREC to go the Centers of Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, USA where her main focus involved laboratory experiments on insecticide resistance among the Aedes aegypti mosquito populations from the Caribbean region. After a year, she came to Trinidad and since then has been at the St Augustine Campus working part-time as a Teaching Assistant in the Department of Life Sciences while writing her dissertation under the supervision of Dr. Dave Chadee.
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