There are many things to love about summertime, but one unanimous thing to hate may be buzzing around as we speak – mosquitoes. But as much as we hate the bloodsuckers, many people are convinced that mosquitoes cannot get enough of them.  Researchers are getting closer to understanding why some people seem to be bitten more than others. National Health Reporter Erin Billups sits down with Leslie Vosshall pHD, she runs the Laboratory of Neurogenetics and Behavior at Rockefeller University, where they have been working to uncover the mystery.  

Erin Billups: I think I’m a super attractive person to mosquitoes and I want answers. I’ve heard the blood type theory. I’ve heard, it’s what you eat, like garlic. Can you talk about the myths that have been out there? 

Dr. Leslie Vosshall: I love that people are so interested in it. The myths are so closely held by members of the public. There’s no evidence that blood type has anything to do with this.  There is good evidence that if you drink beer, you are more attractive to mosquitoes. So I might suggest that if you drink beer, stay indoors. 

Billups: Why is that? 

Vosshall: Nobody knows why. 

It’s these types of questions Dr. Leslie Vosshall’s lab at Rockefeller University seeks to answer- particularly, what drives mosquitoes to bite?  

“The only thing that anybody cared about is why am I always bitten and why is my brother never bitten, etc. We recruited dozens and dozens of people, and we showed that there are huge differences between how attractive people are,” said Vosshall.

Participants in one study wore nylon stockings on their arms for eight hours. Once removed, the stockings were exposed to mosquitos for 10 minutes. Despite the buffet options, mosquitoes were quick to hone in on one particular dish of choice. 

“They’re really, really decisive and they decide quickly,” said Vosshall. “And so person 33 was the super attractor and so super consistent over the many, many years.”

Working alongside scientists at Memorial Sloan Kettering, they discovered what made “Person 33” just the meal mosquitos were searching for – a certain chemical found on the skin. 

Vosshall: The technical name for that is carboxylic acid. These are fatty greasy compounds that are on skin that mosquitoes just can’t get enough of. And so the more of that stuff that you have on your skin, the more attractive you are. You can’t do anything about that. This is just part of your natural body chemistry. 

Billups: Is there any insight into why some people have more of these fatty acids on their skin than others?  

Vosshall: We didn’t control the diet. They would just come into the lab, wear the stockings. So I think it’s very unlikely that this is driven strongly by diet. 

Billups: Or maybe person 33 likes beer? 

Vosshall: I can verify that the person was not drinking beer during the experiment. 

Mosquitos are also attracted to sweaty, hot skin, and the CO2 we breathe out… but it’s the carboxylic acid that really drives them crazy. So, while many of us feel like we’re super attractive to mosquitoes, we actually may not be.  

“When we ask people up front, are you a mosquito magnet? Some people would say, absolutely, I’m always bitten, always bitten. And then we would actually test them in the lab, and they were not that interesting to the mosquitoes,” said Vosshall. 

But what I couldn’t let go is that, with or without “person 33” seasoning… mosquitoes are still hunting for our blood… Is there a connection between carboxylic acid and blood? 

“Our intuition is like your intuition that there must be something extra that the mosquitoes are getting from hunting the people with the high levels of carboxylic acids,” Vosshall said. “We don’t know what that is, that is unknown. And that is the subject for future work.”

Vosshall says hopefully future work will lead to better mosquito repellants- for now deet and picaridin work the best.  

Or you can try to keep cool, and maybe drink the beer inside.