A homegrown catnip lotion has confirmed “simply as efficient as Deet” as a mosquito repellant in trials carried out in Uganda.

Catnip, or Nepeta cataria, is a standard herb from the mint household. The chemical within the plant that causes feline euphoria – nepetalactone – additionally has insect-repelling properties however this has not beforehand been commercialised.

New instruments are very important within the battle towards malaria, the illness unfold by mosquitoes that infects about 282 million folks a yr and killed 610,000 in 2024 – the vast majority of them younger youngsters in African international locations. There are issues about rising resistance to pesticides, in addition to the frontline medicine used to deal with the illness.

In a examine offered on the Society for Experimental Biology convention in Florence on Tuesday, a crew working between Uganda and Wales discovered mosquitoes in search of a blood meal had been much less more likely to land on folks sporting lotions constructed from catnip.

Dr Simon Scofield, a senior lecturer at Cardiff College, stated: “We discovered {that a} 6% catnip oil was simply as efficient as Deet, and the two% catnip oil was solely marginally much less efficient than that.