WIKIMEDIA, CDC/JAMES GATHANYInfection with the malaria-causing Plasmodium parasite makes children smell more enticing to Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes, which carry the disease. An increase in emissions of chemicals known as aldehydes accounted for much of the change in attractiveness, researchers reported yesterday (April 16) in PNAS.
While it was already known that people with malaria are more attractive to mosquitoes than their healthy counterparts, the reason why has not been clear. The new study, therefore, “is very cool, and it’s been needed for some time,” parasitologist Audrey Odom John of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis who was not involved in the study tells News from Science.
In the study, researchers tested the attractiveness of the odors of children with and without malaria by exposing A. gambiae mosquitoes to the children’s socks. Given a choice between a sock worn by a child when he or she was infected and one worn by the same child weeks later, after the infection had cleared, the insects went to the malaria-associated sock ...
