Connecticut: A new study has found that some viruses can alter body odor to make more Attractive To Mosquitoes
Penghua Wang, an assistant professor of immunology at the University of Connecticut in the United States, told a foreign website that mosquitoes are the world’s deadliest organisms, causing more than one million deaths each year from diseases such as malaria, zika, dengue, chikungunya and yellow fever. Cause
If a mosquito bites a person who has a virus, the virus can be transmitted to a person who is bitten by a mosquito after being infected. Body temperature, respiratory carbon dioxide and odor are all factors that help the mosquito to choose its next target.
Preliminary studies have shown that mice that have malaria change their odor to make it more attractive to insects.
Professor Wang said the researchers kept rats infected with the dengue or Zika virus and mice that were not infected with the virus in a glass chamber. There were mosquitoes in a glass arm attached to the chamber.
He said that when the researchers passed air through their chambers to infect the mosquitoes, most of the mosquitoes preferred to fly towards the infected mosquitoes.
“When we installed filters to control the smell of rats, the proportion of mosquitoes on both sides became equal,” he said.
He said that in the smell of infected rats, three out of 20 gaseous chemical compounds were found to alert the mosquitoes.
Professor Wang said the odor collected from dengue patients contained more acetophenone than healthy people.
