FILE - An adult female Anopheles mosquito bites a human body. (Photo by Soumyabrata Roy/NurPhoto via Getty Images) Why are some people seemingly a mosquito magnet, while others are able to avoid those pesky bites?
A new, small study suggests that certain soaps and scents may make one more or less attractive to the insects. However, the effects vary between people – and each person’s unique human scent also plays a role, according to the researchers.
The study, conducted by researchers at Virginia Tech and published on May 10 in the journal iScience, included four human volunteers whose chemical odors were studied both when unwashed, and after they had washed themselves with each of four brands of soap: Dial, Dove, Native, and Simple Truth.
The team also analyzed the odor profiles of the soaps themselves.Soap-washing was found to impact the mosquitoes’ preferences, but this differed between soap types and the human volunteers.