2023-05-20 15:24:53
A recent study identified a group of different chemicals in the smell of the human body, which attract insects, especially mosquitoes, which constitute a source of special nuisance to humans, especially in the summer.
Many are disgusted with the itch that results from a mosquito bite, so they strive to acquire chemicals to spray on their bodies and where they sit to protect them from these annoying insects.
says a recent scientific report Published by researchersFriday, that the female mosquito that is preparing to lay eggs needs a meal that contains additional protein, which is blood, and perhaps this is the reason behind the continuous attack of mosquitoes on humans.
The report says that annoying itching may be the best thing that can happen, because mosquito bites can be fatal at times, thanks to the parasites and viruses they transmit, which may cause serious diseases such as malaria.
“Malaria still causes more than 600,000 deaths annually, mostly among children under the age of five, as well as pregnant women,” added McMeneman, a senior author of the new study published in the journal Current Biology.
Then he continued in an interview with CNN news that “diseases caused by mosquitoes cause a lot of suffering around the world, and part of the motivation for this study was to try to understand how the mosquitoes that transmit malaria find humans.”
In this study, McMeneman and colleagues focused on Anopheles gambiae, a species of mosquito found in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in Zambia, where the study took place.
“We were really excited to try to develop a system where we could study the behavior of the African malaria mosquito in a natural habitat, which mirrors its native habitat in Africa,” said the researcher.
The researchers also wanted to compare the smell “tastes” of mosquitoes across different humans, to note the insects’ ability to track odors over distances of up to 20 meters, and to study them during their active hours, that is, between 10 pm and 2 am.
The behavior of hundreds of mosquitoes was then tracked in a 20-meter area of people sleeping in tents.
It is noteworthy that the mosquitoes used in the study were not infected with malaria, and were unable to reach sleeping humans, because the research was intended to study only their behavior and not track their bite method.
The researchers found that what most of us believe that mosquitoes are more attracted to people than others is true.
Results
Chemical analyzes of the air from the tents in which the subjects were sleeping revealed which odor-causing substances were behind the mosquito’s attraction, or lack thereof.
The researchers found that mosquitoes were more attracted to a type of acid, “carboxylic acid” (Carboxylic AcidIt is a compound found in “smelly” cheeses such as the well-known Limburger.
And these carboxylic acids are produced by bacteria on human skin that are not noticeable to us.
While the carboxylic acids attracted mosquitoes, the insects seemed to be deterred by another chemical called eucalyptol (eucalyptol) and are present in plants.
The researchers suspected that one sample with a high concentration of eucalyptol might be related to the participants’ diet.
One of the researchers involved in the study said finding a relationship between chemicals in different people’s body odors and the attraction of mosquitoes to those odors was “interesting”.
He continued, in an interview withCNN“This discovery opens avenues for developing repellents that can be used in traps to disrupt mosquito behaviour, and thus control malaria vectors in areas where the disease is endemic.”
“I think it’s a very exciting study,” said Leslie Voschall, a neurobiologist and vice president and chief scientific officer at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, who was not involved in the study.
“It is the first time that an experiment of this kind has been carried out on this scale outside of the laboratory,” she continued.
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