Mouse in a glass chamber used for collection of volatile compoundsCOURTESY OF SLOFF, DE MORAES, AND MESCHER RESEARCH GROUPMalaria changes the odor profiles of infected mice, making them at times more attractive to mosquitoes that transmit the malaria-causing parasite Plasmodium chabaudii, according to a study published in PNAS today (June 30). Scientists from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich) and their colleagues found that Anopheles stephensi mosquitoes were most attracted to P. chaubaudii-infected mice most often when the animals were still highly infectious, after their acute symptoms had subsided. The team suggested that this parasite’s apparent manipulation of its host could help explain how insect vectors are preferentially attracted to infected individuals during transmissible stages of malaria, as other groups have shown.
“This is the first convincing study that demonstrates a significant change in volatiles from malaria-infected mammals that affect mosquito behavior,” medical entomologist James Logan from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine told The Scientist in an e-mail. Logan, who was not involved in the work, added that the team went to great lengths—combining analytical chemistry with behavioral assays, among other things, to pin down the odor compounds emitted by mice at different stages of infection and to test mosquitoes’ responses to those odors.
Several studies on both animal models and humans had previously linked malaria-associated odor modifications to mosquito attraction. But this paper “is the first to provide stringent evidence that yes, indeed, odor modifications are involved in the malaria-induced changes in mosquito ...
