The Sock Theory

Have you ever stood (or laid down) unprotected in a room full of mosquitoes? Have you ever noticed which part of your body the little vampires found juicy?

I have and it is mostly the legs. I had no idea why that was, though I did have a couple of theories. One is that the mosquitoes targeted any part of the body that was sticking out. Like, if you had curved into a ball and stretched out your arms, the mosquitoes bit more at the arms. The second theory is that the proximity our legs had from mosquito hideouts. Like the underside of the work desk, kitchen counter, bed, bushes in the garden, and such.

Turns out I was wrong.

15 years ago, a Dutch scientist Dr. Bart Knols made an experiment on himself. Standing in a dark room he found that the mosquitoes were more drawn to his legs. (Much like I did. Hell, that makes me a scientist too. Where’s the Nobel Prize dude?)

Dr. Knols found that our legs are four times more attractive to the mosquitoes. So if your legs were uncovered you tend to attract four times more mosquitoes, than you would otherwise. Or if you were wearing your stinking socks that you haven’t washed for, say, a week, you’d be a mosquito super-magnet. (South Chennai desperately needs one) However, this effect seemed to diminish after the legs were washed.

Though the finding did seem significant, there were no takers. That was, until now.

In 2009, a young Tanzanian, Fredros Okumu, the Principal Investigator for the Mosquito Control Project of Ifakara Health Institute, decided to use Dr. Knols’ research for his.  Procuring synthetic versions of chemical that imitate what the humans naturally emit as sweat etc. As part of a series of experiments, Okumu’s team have created a sock trap. Experimenting in real life situations in the villages, they used both such synthetic baits as well as human. The volunteers were made to sleep under mosquito nets in a hut, while the chemical cocktail was placed in another. It was so successful that the mosquitoes were attracted more to the chemicals than the humans. They also found that while the socks worked at close quarters, the chemicals worked at a long range. Okumu is convinced that most of the malarial transmission takes place outdoors, so he hopes that his research could be practically applied to control mosquitoes outdoors.  Though, it would take sometime before Dr.Knols’ and Okumu’s works were extensively used.

[Recently, Okumu’s team got funds from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Grand Challenges Canada. (BMGF do good work, but guys, technology is not always good. We don’t need bio synthesised mosquitoes that might turn our lives into a nightmare worthy of a sci-fi thriller)]

Source:  www.healthymagination.com/blog

You can follow Fredros Okumu’s blog at www.malariaworld.org/blogs/okumuf