Malaria Makes You Smell Delicious to Mosquitos

June 17, 2016

You'd think it would be bad enough just catching malaria. It's a pretty unpleasant and dangerous disease to catch, but apparently, it also makes mosquitos even more attracted to you. Scientists already knew that factors like sweat, breath odor, and high body temperature could affect how much a person attracts mosquitos, but a new study revealed that people infected with transmittable malaria rather than uninfected people or people infected with a non-transmittable form of malaria are more attractive to mosquitos.

1. So, this means that malaria, in addition to causing vomiting, fever, headache, and possibly death, will also make more mosquitos bite you. Scientists believe that this is because attracting mosquitos encourages the spread of the disease, as mosquito biting rates seriously influences the spread of malaria. So, by getting more mosquitos to bite you, the disease is ensuring it's own survival. I don't think I've ever called a disease rude, but in this case I feel like that description is particularly fitting. Malaria is just plain rude.

Have you ever caught malaria or known someone who caught it? Did you or they notice an increase in the number of mosquitos attracted to you/them?