STUDY OF HERBAL TOPICAL REPELLENT MADE OF BETEL LEAVES (Piper betle) AND PATCHOULI OIL (Pogostemon cablin) MIXTURE AGAINST YELLOW FEVER MOSQUITO (Aedes aegypti)

Abstrak

Exploration of plants as natural repellent against yellow fever mosquito (Aedes aegypty) that transmits dengue virus to human is still underway. Betel leaves (Piper betle) could be used as repellent material. The study was aimed to test the repellency, potency, and safety of topical lotion repellent of betel and patchouli oil mixture against yellow fever mosquito. This study used nulliparous of 3-5 days old female yellow fever mosquito. Before the study, irritation test was conducted as safety test. Five treatments with five replications was implemented to seek the most effective repellent substance i.e. DEET lotion for positive control, betel leaves and patchouli oil mixture lotion, betel leaves only lotion, patchouli oil only lotion and base lotion only. The substance effectiveness was determined based on the rejection of yellow fever mosquito to bite human's arms and was analyzed using protective percentage. The irritation test showed no safety concerns. Protective percentage analysis showed that modified betel leaves lotion had mean protective power of over 900/0 for 6 hours. The data showed that the modified lotions had the same protective percentage as the DEET (ratio: PP (betel+patchou1i)/PP (DEET) =O.98; confidence interval 0.93, 1.04; p- value=O.50). This indicated that betel leaves mixed with patchouli oil is potential to be used as safe repellent against yellow fever mosquito.