The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Don't swat. That's the advice of a team of researchers who say that smacking mosquitoes on human skin may increase the risk of infections. Instead, Christina Coyle and colleagues at New York's Albert Einstein College of Medicine recommend flicking the bloodsuckers if one lands on your skin. Coyle's team researched the case of a Pennsylvania woman who died two years ago of a fungal infection in her muscles called "Brachiola algerae." The fungus had been thought only to exist in mosquitoes and other insects. Since the fungus is not found in mosquito saliva, it could not have been passed on through a bite. The researchers concluded that the woman must have smeared the bug's body parts into her skin when she smacked it in mid-bite. Doctors already apply the 'flick, don't swat' advice to ticks, who may pass Lyme disease onto humans. But not all physicians are ready to do the same for mosquitoes, including Dr. Roger S. Nasci, an expert on the annoying insects at a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention facility in Colorado. "There are no published data I'm aware of that document the risk of infections by fungus microbes associated with squashing vs. flicking blood-feeding mosquitoes," he said. Others argue that since the Pennsylvania woman was on medication that weakened her resistance to infections, that may have played a role.
