Specific odors from malaria infected individuals attract more mosquitoes
April 17, 2018
Malaria causes the bodies of its human hosts to emit specific odors from the skin that make the hosts even more attractive to mosquitoes, which invites further bites and risks infection of more mosquitoes and wider transmission of the disease.
It's a vicious circle but one that has enabled a multinational team of researchers to identify the odors as organic hydrocarbons in the form of three aldehydes, heptanal, octanal and nonanal, whose discovery could bring relief to a disease that claimed nearly half a million lives in 2016.
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20180417/Specific-odors-from-malaria-infected-individuals-attract-more-mosquitoes.aspx
