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Plasmodium-associated changes in human odor attract mosquitoes

pnas.org

31–32 of 32 posts

Re: Plasmodium-associated changes in human odor attract mosquitoes

#31

Very interesting I am a person who mosquitoes love to bite but I don't have any disease (that I know off). My wife can lay next to me and not get a single bite while I am fighting them off left and right. I wonder what else can contribute to this difference.

Diet and bite sensitivity. I get a few tiny ones that I usually don't notice, a relative gets many huge swellings that need medical attention.

I believe different attractors are weighted more strongly in different types of mosquitoes too. Some prefer co2, some heat, other detect compounds in sweat or exhaled gases, like the aldehydes from bananas!

Re: Plasmodium-associated changes in human odor attract mosquitoes

#32
post #2

""" Malaria parasites (Plasmodium) can change the attractiveness of their vertebrate hosts to Anopheles vectors, leading to a greater number of vector–host contacts and increased transmission. Indeed, naturally Plasmodium-infected children have been shown to attract more mosquitoes than parasite-free children. """

Were those mosquitoes parasite-free?

To maximize infectiousness, the Plasmodii would then manipulate infected mosquitoes to ignore that smell and feed on uninfected humans...

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