Scientists have found a new weapon in the laboratory to reduce the spread of malaria by blocking the sexual development of the malaria parasite, according to media reports Wednesday.

The disease spread by mosquito bites: the mosquito gets gametes, or sex cells, of malaria parasite when it bites an infected human. The gametes continue the sexual cycle inside the mosquito and are transmitted in its saliva the next time it sucks up human blood.

The gametes do not provoke malaria's terrible symptoms, but settle in the liver where they eventually give rise to the parasite that does.

A team led by David Baker at the London school of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine discovered an enzyme critical to the parasite's sex cycle.

"It acts as an inhibitor that stops the parasite from developing sexually," Baker said.

"If we could develop a drug for patients, it would enable us to block malaria transmission from individual to individual via the species of mosquitoes that carry the disease," he said.

Baker said that the drug might also have a curative effect, though the study only focuses on the spread of the disease.

(Agencies via Xinhua News Agency June 5, 2008)