{"id":3634,"date":"2023-05-23T12:40:36","date_gmt":"2023-05-23T17:40:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=3634"},"modified":"2023-05-23T12:40:40","modified_gmt":"2023-05-23T17:40:40","slug":"how-attractive-are-you-to-mosquitoes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2023\/05\/23\/how-attractive-are-you-to-mosquitoes\/","title":{"rendered":"How attractive are you to mosquitoes?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p>Virginia Tech researchers conduct proof-of-concept study on mosquito scent preferences. Using scented soaps, Virginia Tech researchers found that the smell of certain body soaps could make humans more or less attractive to mosquitoes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>People have been using products to alter their scent for generations. From soaps to perfumes, people gravitate to floral and fruity smells.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Whether we think these smells are good or bad is of little consequence to mosquitoes, transmitters of diseases that kill hundreds of thousands of people each year. Additionally, mosquitoes rely on plant nectar to get some sugars needed to sustain their metabolism in addition to needing nutrients in the blood to produce eggs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And humans with nutrients and a floral scent? That\u2019s two strikes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Despite these scents being right under humans\u2019 noses, the impact of soap smell on mosquito preference was largely ignored until Virginia Tech researchers in the&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cals.vt.edu\/\">College of Agriculture and Life Sciences<\/a>&nbsp;asked the question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They found that certain soaps could make people more or less attractive to mosquitoes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cJust by changing soap scents, someone who already attracts mosquitoes at a higher-than-average rate could further amplify or decrease that attraction,\u201d said&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.biochem.vt.edu\/people\/faculty\/clement-vinauger.html\">Cl\u00e9ment Vinauger<\/a>, assistant professor of biochemistry and co-principal investigator on the proof-of-concept study with collaborator Chlo\u00e9 Lahond\u00e8re, also assistant professor of biochemistry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cell.com\/iscience\/fulltext\/S2589-0042(23)00744-7\">The research<\/a>\u00a0on mosquito soap interactions was published May 10 in\u00a0<a>iScience<\/a>\u00a0and was funded in part by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/vtx.vt.edu\/articles\/2023\/05\/cals_mosquito_scent_preference_study.html\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Virginia Tech researchers conduct proof-of-concept study on mosquito scent preferences. Using scented soaps, Virginia Tech researchers found that the smell of certain body soaps could make humans more or less attractive to mosquitoes. People have been using products to alter their scent for generations. From soaps to perfumes, people gravitate to floral and fruity smells. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":3635,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":false,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coping-with-covid"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/mosquito.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3634"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3636,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3634\/revisions\/3636"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}