The mosquito is a fact of life in Mississippi. The bloodthirsty insect has even jokingly been called Mississippi’s state bird.
Imagine how much worse the problem used to be in the Mississippi Delta. Before most of the swamps were drained and large-scale use of pesticides were introduced, malaria was a common illness in parts of the Delta. That’s why many wealthy landowners used to live in the hills for much of the year.
There might be fewer mosquitoes today, but there are still millions of them out there. They can turn any large outdoor gathering at night — last Friday’s Pillow Academy football game, for example — into a blood buffet.
And mosquitoes are still making people ill in Mississippi. On Tuesday, the state Department of Health said that a Madison County resident had become the second person in Mississippi to die of West Nile virus in 2014.
So far this year, 15 human West Nile cases have been reported. There has been one each in Bolivar, Covington, Forrest, Madison, Newton, Yazoo and Wilkinson counties; two each in Adams and Hinds counties; and four in Rankin County.
In 2013, Mississippi had 45 West Nile cases and five deaths.
Here’s some bad news: The blood suckers like some of us more than others.
“An estimated 20 percent of people, it turns out, are especially delicious for mosquitoes, and get bit more often on a consistent basis,” Smithsonian.com reports. “And while scientists don’t yet have a cure for the ailment, other than preventing bites with insect repellent (which, we’ve recently discovered, some mosquitoes can become immune to over time), they do have a number of ideas regarding why some of us are more prone to bites than others.”
Factors include:
Blood type: Mosquitoes seem to find people with Type O the most delicious. In one study, mosquitoes landed on people with Type O almost twice as often as those with Type A. Type B fell somewhere in the middle.
Carbon dioxide: One of the main ways mosquitoes locate their targets is by smelling the carbon dioxide emitted in their targets’ breath. (The insects can detect this from more than 180 feet away.) As a result, people who exhale more of the gas — generally, larger people — attract more mosquitoes. This is one reason why children tend to get bit less than adults.
Exercise and metabolism: Mosquitoes find victims at closer range by smelling the lactic acid, uric acid, ammonia and other substances in their sweat. The insects are also attracted to people with higher body temperatures. Because strenuous exercise increases the lactic acid and heat in your body, it makes you stand out to the skeeters. Genetic factors influence the amount of uric acid and other substances naturally emitted by each person, making it easier for mosquitoes to find some people than others.
Beer: A study found that one 12-ounce container of beer can make you more attractive to the insects. Drinking raises your body temperature, so that’s probably the reason. And after a cold one or two, beer drinkers may just move slower.
Pregnancy: Pregnant women attract twice as many mosquito bites as others, several studies have shown, likely a result of the confluence of two factors: They exhale about 21 percent more carbon dioxide and are on average about 1.26 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than non-pregnant people.
Clothing color: Mosquitoes use vision (along with scent) to locate humans, so wearing colors that stand out (black, dark blue or red) may make you easier to find, a University of Florida study found.
Genetics: Underlying genetic factors are estimated to account for 85 percent of the variability in people’s attractiveness to mosquitoes, regardless of whether it’s expressed through blood type, metabolism or other factors.
Natural repellants: Some researchers have started looking at the reasons why a minority of people seem to rarely attract mosquitoes. Using chromatography to isolate the particular chemicals these people emit, scientists have found that these natural repellers tend to excrete a handful of substances that mosquitoes don’t seem to find appealing.
One day, perhaps these molecules can be incorporated into an advanced bug spray that will keep mosquitoes from finding even a Type O, exercising pregnant woman in a dark shirt.
No matter, the mosquitoes will just go after the beer drinkers.
• Contact Charles Corder at 581-7241 or ccorder@gwcommonwealth.com.
