Some Viruses Make You Smell Tastier to Mosquitoes
A sneaky way of increasing a virus's odds of transmission:
Zika and dengue fever viruses alter the scent of mice and humans they infect, researchers report in the June 30 issue of Cell. The altered scent attracts mosquitoes, which bite the host, drink their infected blood, and then carry the virus to its next victim.
[...] These viruses require ongoing infections in animal hosts as well as mosquitoes in order to spread. If either of these are missing—if all the susceptible hosts clear the virus, or all the mosquitoes die—the virus disappears. For example, during the yellow fever outbreak in Philadelphia in 1793, the coming of the fall frosts killed the local mosquitoes, and the outbreak ended.
In tropical climates without killing frosts, there are always mosquitoes; the virus just needs one to bite an infected host animal in order to spread. Zika and dengue viruses seem to have developed a sneaky way of increasing the odds.
[...] "The virus can manipulate the hosts' skin microbiome to attract more mosquitoes to spread faster!" says Penghua Wang, an immunologist at UConn Health and one of the study authors. The findings could explain how mosquito viruses manage to persist for such a long time.
Wang and his coauthors also tested a potential preventative. They gave mice with dengue fever a type of vitamin A derivatives, isotretinoin, known to increase the production of the skin's antimicrobial peptide. The isotretinoin-treated mice gave off less acetophenone, reducing their attractiveness to mosquitoes and potentially reducing the risk of infecting others with the virus.
Wang says the next step is to analyze more human patients with dengue and Zika to see if the skin odor-microbiome connection is generally true in real world conditions, and to see if isotretinoin reduces acetophenone production in sick humans as well as it does in sick mice.
Journal Reference:
HongZhang, YibinZhu, ZiwenLiu, et al., A volatile from the skin microbiota of flavivirus-infected hosts promotes mosquito attractiveness, Cell, 2022. DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2022.05.016
(Score: 2) by Revek on Saturday July 02 2022, @03:38PM (2 children)
Seriously they fight to get to me upwind.
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(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Saturday July 02 2022, @10:08PM (1 child)
Some people also smell more attractive to mosquitoes naturally. Unfortunately I'm one of them: in a group of 10 people, the mosquitoes all have a go at me and ignore the others. You seem to be in the same boat.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Sunday July 03 2022, @12:33AM
My wife is a mosquito attractant, however I'm of very little interest to them. I was really hoping that our kids would get my gene on that one - I think we have managed 50-50 across the two of them.
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 02 2022, @04:29PM (2 children)
Is there a mystery here? Viral infection = temperature = more heat +/- volatiles given off = YUM!
Polite reminder: use a fan to reduce mosquito bites. They can't fly very well and somehow can't figure it out if there's a little breeze.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday July 03 2022, @02:09AM
I live in a breezy-to-windy area, and it doesn't seem to discourage the mosquitoes in the least.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Funny) by maxwell demon on Monday July 04 2022, @07:44AM
While SoylentNews tells me that I have indeed a few fans, I don't know how to use them to reduce mosquito bites. Invite them to my home for mosquito-hunting, maybe? :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by EJ on Saturday July 02 2022, @05:51PM (1 child)
Scientists need to find a way to genetically modify mosquitoes to crave pollen instead of blood. Then, not only will we have a major health and quality-of-life improvement for all humans, but they can supplement the role of struggling bee colonies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 03 2022, @05:14PM
Awesomeness! Then we can kill all the bees with abandon, like in fact we are already doing.