Researchers have discovered why mosquitoes that transmit dangerous viruses are attracted to humans

US researchers on Friday found that mosquitoes infected with dengue and Zika virus were responsible for forming a receptor that causes human perspiration from lactic acid, US researchers reported.

Matthew DeGennaro, a neurogenetic scientist at the University of Florida in Miami, and his colleagues have identified a gene called IR8a, without which mosquitoes lose much of their olfactory ability.

According to experiments conducted on 14 people, mutant mosquitoes that do not have this gene were twice as attracted to humans as wild mosquitoes.

Scientists published Thursday in the journal Current Biology research on mosquitoes Aedes aegypti, which transmit Zika virus, dengue fever and yellow fever.

For decades, mosquitoes were attracted to sweat and lactic acid (in addition to heat and carbon dioxide exhaled by humans), but the researchers did not yet know the genetic mechanisms and exact molecular.

"I looked for the receptor for lactic acid in the 1960s," said Professor DeGennaro.

Theoretically, we could now try to block this olfactory path to mosquitoes with a chemical or an equivalent perfume to become almost invisible to the antennae of insects (where are the main olfactory organs), he said.

However, the manufacture of this substance remains a challenge. "It will take years, but we have really taken a step forward," said Matthew DeGennaro.

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