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posted by cmn32480 on Sunday May 10 2015, @05:37PM   Printer-friendly
from the I've-come-to-suck-your-blood! dept.

It’s not just popular imagination: mosquitoes bite some people more than others. We don't really understand why, but a recent paper in PLOS One suggests that genes could play a role in the attraction.

We’ve known for a while that smell is at least a partial explanation for why some people are mosquito fodder while others return from the outdoors unscathed. A number of different studies have found that differences in body odor are related to interest from mosquitoes. What we don’t properly understand is what causes those differences in smell.

A widespread myth is that certain foods can repel or attract mosquitoes, but there’s no clear explanation for how diet could change attraction levels, write the authors of the new study. What evidence we have seems to lean away from food as a factor. This makes sense: if mosquitoes use smell to find a suitable meal, they’d evolve to sniff out stable smells, not smells that change with every meal.

 
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  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday May 11 2015, @03:53AM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday May 11 2015, @03:53AM (#181343) Journal

    Not sure about that at all. My wife has oily skin, I have rather dry skin. Neither of us is the magnet, but I'm more likely to be bitten than she is. I kinda had the idea that the oily skin tended to repel mosquitos. Of course, I've never made the slightest attempt to research that idea.

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