Health. When viruses change the smell of your skin and attract mosquitoes…

Are you more the type to attract mosquitoes? Several factors can promote mosquito bites. A team of Chinese researchers* has just identified the action of two viruses on the skin microbiome of infected people.

It would seem that the dengue and the zika manage to alter body odor, thus attracting more mosquitoes. This would allow these diseases to continue to spread.

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Facilitated transmission

Dengue and Zika are both diseases transmitted by mosquito bites.

Here’s how: an infected person or animal is bitten by a mosquito, which then becomes a carrier of the virus. This same mosquito then bites another person or animal, contaminating them in turn. And so on.

But for this chain not to be interrupted, there must always be mosquitoes (this is the case in tropical countries) and there must always be infected carriers.

Chinese researchers have found that two viruses operate a complementary strategy to ensure that mosquitoes continue to transmit them. This strategy consists of modifying the body odor of infected people, so that their skin is even more attractive to mosquitoes.

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A favored molecule

To reach this conclusion, the scientists compared the attraction of mosquitoes towards infected mice and uninfected rodents. Carrier mice were actually bitten more.

The researchers then analyzed the odorous molecules in the skin of these rodents and found that one of these molecules, acetophenone, particularly appealed to the insects. Analysis of the skin of patients infected with dengue confirmed the presence of this molecule in significant quantities.

How to explain it? In an uncontaminated person, the skin produces an antimicrobial peptide which limits the production of acetophenone. But in the event of infection by these viruses, the skin no longer produces enough of this peptide.

Results, “Viruses can manipulate the host’s skin microbiome in order to attract mosquitoes and allow the disease to spread faster,” the authors conclude.

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A preventive track

According to the researchers, isotretinoin could increase the production of this skin peptide, preventing the viral strategy from working. It remains to be validated that this treatment is effective in humans in real conditions. To be continued.

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* UConn Health, Tsinghua University à Pékin, Institute of Infectious Diseases à Shenzhen, Ruili Hospital of Chinese Medicine and Dai Medicine, Yunnan Tropical and Subtropical Animal Virus Disease Laboratory et le Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

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