Health
May 20, 2023 | 8:37 p.m
Having body odor can lead to more mosquito bites.
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New research has found that smelly armpits can make some people more attractive to mosquitoes.
This seems to be the reason why some people are badly hurt by the annoying creatures – while others get away scot-free, according to scientists.
Harmful insects are attracted to body odor, also known as BO — and mosquitoes can find us from 350 feet away when they inhale, according to SWNS, the British news service.
Mosquitoes can also carry deadly diseases.
The new findings are based on the African malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae, which was released into an ice rink-sized outdoor testing arena in Zambia.
The study’s lead author, Dr. Diego Giraldo, a neuroscientist, “This is the largest system to assess olfactory preference for any mosquito in the world. And it is a very busy sensory environment for mosquitoes,” as reported by SWNS.
The team from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, released 200 hungry mosquitoes each night and used infrared motion cameras to observe how often they landed on evenly spaced pads heated to 35ºC — which simulated the human skin, the report said.
A good sign that they are ready to bite.
Body odor seems to be a more attractive bait than CO2 — a known cue for mosquitoes.
But further tests showed that the swarm of 200 individuals was also selective. The scent of six volunteers sleeping in surrounding single-person tents was rubbed into the pads for six consecutive nights.
This allowed the researchers to record the mosquitoes’ preferences and collect nightly air samples from the tents to compare airborne components with body odor.
Senior author Dr. Conor McMeniman, a vector biologist, said, “These mosquitoes usually hunt people in the hours before and after midnight,” as SWNS also reported.
“They follow scent trails and convective currents coming from people, and they usually enter houses and bite between 10 pm and 2 am”
He added, “We wanted to examine the olfactory preferences of mosquitoes during the peak period of activity when they are out and about and active – and also examine the odor from sleeping humans in the same time window.”
At night, some people are more attractive to mosquitoes than others, the study found.
A volunteer, with a unique smell, continued to attract very few mosquitoes, according to the study.
The study also identified 40 chemicals that all people excrete – albeit at different rates.
Lead co-author Dr. Stephanie Rankin-Turner, an analytical chemist, “Maybe it’s a ratio-specific mixture that they’re following … driving it, but we hope we’ll be able to figure that out in the coming years.
People who were more attractive to mosquitoes consistently released more carboxylic acids produced by skin microbes, the study said.
In contrast, the person less attractive to mosquitoes gave off fewer acids but triple the amount of eucalyptol, a plant compound.
It is found in oils, herbs and spices – and high levels can be related to diet.
The researchers were surprised by how efficient the mosquitoes were at searching and choosing between potential human meals within the large arena, SWNS said.
Dr Rankin-Turner added, “When you see something moved from a small laboratory space where the odors are, and the mosquitoes still find them in this big open space in a farm in Zambia , it really drives home how powerful these mosquitoes are as host seekers.”
The study was published in the journal Current Biology.
This could lead to the development of more effective defenses and traps, SWNS says.
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