Monday, November 23, 2015

Do Mosquitos Love You? Blame Your Genes

Ever wonder why you are the only one ever being eaten up by mosquitos while others don't? Why are these mosquitos circling you but not the person next to you? In a recent study, researchers found that mosquitos are attracted to body odors, which are influenced by your genetic make up.
The study consisted of 8 pairs of female identical twins and 19 pairs of female fraternal twins. They found that expert sniffers were able to match the scents to the identical twins and then tested the identical and fraternal twins to see which were more attractive to the mosquitoes.The research revealed that the participants' attractiveness to mosquitoes was more similar in identical twins than the fraternal twins, hence the idea that your genetic makeup influences the odor that attracts mosquitoes.
Much more research must be done to further prove the idea. This type of research is extremely important because this could help fight against mosquito transmitted diseases like Malaria, West Nile Virus, Elephantiasis, Dengue Fever, and Yellow Fever.
I personally believe more research should be done because the repellents that we use for the mosquitos in the long run will start hurting humans. Mosquitos are evolving more and more and are beginning to be immune to the repellents, meaning we have to make stronger ones ver time. The stronger the repellent odors, the more harmful on humans.

Original Article

3 comments:

  1. I am slightly skeptical about this research, due to its small sample size as well as focusing on something as variable as smell. It makes sense that mosquitos would be attracted to the smell of its food source, but the research method seems lacking.

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  2. I find this research to be interesting because of how many mosquito repellents are used in the world. Their scent is designed to stop mosquitoes from attacking however sometimes they do not always work for certain people. This research points out why they do not work because people have different odors and some cannot mask the repellent. I do agree more research should be done before the repellents cause issues to humans.

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  3. I find this to be interesting, I've always thought that mosquitos must be attracted to certain people over others. I would agree that all though this is an interesting experiment the sample size is rather small. This experiment certainly needs more research done with a larger sample size but I do think they are on to something. This is a very important topic because of all the diseases that get transmitted by mosquitos.

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