A Strange Malaria Vaccine: Sleep Beside a Chicken
Staying in Africa and want to ensure you don't catch malaria? A new study offers a solution: place a chicken in a cage near your bed.
If malaria sounds like an outdated disease from the stories of pioneers in Israel, you probably haven't needed to fly to Africa recently. To reach most African countries, you first need to get vaccinations. Among them is malaria. This disease is still very much present and deadly.
However, the newly discovered malaria 'vaccine' doesn't require an injection. Scientists at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, in cooperation with scientists from Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia, found that the main mosquito transmitting malaria, the Anopheles mosquito, keeps its distance from chickens. Unlike humans, cattle, and sheep, whose blood the mosquito craves, chickens hold no interest for it.
How does it work? It turns out that chickens emit a smell that repels these mosquitoes. The researchers say: "We were surprised to find that malaria mosquitoes detest the odors chickens emit and therefore keep their distance."
To check if chicken odors can also protect humans, the researchers collected chemical compounds from chicken feathers and placed them inside mosquito traps set near a bed where a person was sleeping. The result: these traps caught far fewer mosquitoes than traps placed in a room without the chicken scent. In other words, most mosquitoes also avoided approaching humans due to the chicken scent. Similar results were achieved when a live chicken was placed in a cage in the room.
"The people of Africa have suffered from malaria for many generations, and mosquitoes are becoming more and more resistant to insecticides," say the researchers. "For this reason, there is a need to develop original defense measures against mosquitoes. In our study, we successfully identified a natural odor compound that repels malaria mosquitoes and prevents them from approaching people."
