Mosquitoes are the most dangerous animal. There are over 1 million deaths a year due to mosquito-borne diseases.
Factors in how a virus circulates in nature are how mosquitoes seek out and feed on their host. A mosquito that bites a person with a Viruses can transmit it to the next person it bites
New strategies for preventing and treating mosquito-borne diseases may be offered by a better understanding of how a Viruses interacts with a host.
Some viruses can change a person's body odor to make them more attractive to mosquitoes, which in turn leads to more bites that allow a virus to spread.
The carbon dioxide in your breath and your body temperature are some of the sensory clues that mosquitoes use to find a potential host.
There's a role for odors. Changes in the scent of mice that have been exposed to Malaria make them more attractive to mosquitoes.
With this in mind, my colleagues and I wondered if other mosquito-borne viruses can change a person's scent to make them more attractive to mosquitoes, and if there is a way to prevent this.
In order to investigate this, we put mice with and without the viruses in a glass chamber. When we put air through the mouse chambers to get the mosquitoes' odors out, we found that more mosquitoes flew towards the mice that were sick.
Carbon dioxide was ruled out as a reason for why the mosquitoes were attracted to the mice.
When mosquitoes didn't differentiate between mice with elevated or normal body temperatures, we ruled out body temperature as a factor that could be attractive.
We looked at the role of body odors in the mosquito's attraction to mice.
We found that the number of mosquitoes flying towards the mice was the same as the number of mosquitoes flying towards the other animals.
The odors of the mice may have attracted the mosquitoes to them.
We isolated 20 different compounds from the smell of the mice. We found three that stimulated a response in the mosquitos.
Only one of the three compounds, acetophenone, attracted more mosquitoes than the control when applied to the skin of healthy mice. We found that mice with infections produced more acetophenone than those without.
We found that the odors from the armpits of people with the disease contained more acetophenone than those without it.
When we put the patient odors on one hand of a volunteer and the healthy person's odors on the other, mosquitoes were more attracted to the hand with the patient odors.
The findings show that the two viruses can increase the amount of acetophenone in their hosts and make them more attractive to mosquitoes. The mosquito that bites these attractive hosts may go on to bite other people and spread the disease.
We wanted to find out how the viruses were increasing the amount of acetophenone.
Along with being a chemical commonly used as a fragrance in perfumes, acetophenone is also a metabolism produced by certainbacteria on the skin and in the bowels of both people and mice. We wondered if it was related to the change in the type ofbacteria on the skin.
We removed the skin from mice that had been bitten and then exposed them to mosquitoes.
The mosquitoes were more attracted to the mice with the idiosyncrasy than the mice without the idiosyncrasy.
The results show that skin microbes are an important source of acetophenone.
We found that a common type of rod-shapedbacteria, Bacillus, was a major acetophenone producer and had increased numbers on the mice that were exposed to it.
The mosquito-borne viruses were able to change their host's smell by altering the skin's flora.
We wondered if there was a way to keep this from happening.
When we observed that mice had decreased levels of an important microbe-fighting molecule, we found a potential option. The mice were more vulnerable to infections due to the suppressed production of this molecule.
The production of RELM can be boosted by the use of vitamins A and C. We exposed the mice to mosquitoes after giving them a vitamin A derivative and measuring the amount of RELM and Bacillusbacteria on their skins.
We found that mice that had been treated with the vitamin A derivative were able to restore their RELM levels back to those that hadn't been exposed. The treated mice were less attractive to the mosquitoes.
Next, we will apply what we learn to patients. In developing countries, there is a deficiency of vitamins A and C. In sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, there are diseases caused by mosquitos.
The next step is to investigate whether vitamins A and its derivatives can reduce the attraction of mosquitoes to people who have been bitten by a mosquito.
The assistant professor of immunology is from the University of Connecticut.
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