Why is it that mosquitoes can transmit a disease like malaria, but not AIDS? I’m Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet, presented by the American Museum of Natural History.
Research scientist, Varuni Kulasekera:
“When a mosquito bites and takes a blood meal they would take a certain number of viruses in your body, along with the blood meal. And that amount of viruses would not be enough to transmit AIDS to another person. And another reason is that when the virus is taken out of a human body or a monkey’s body, then the temperature goes down because the mosquitoes don’t have the same body temperature as mammals.”
Once its temperature drops much below that of the human body, the AIDS virus dies. And while mosquitoes can’t spread AIDS from one person to another, they can and do transmit malaria. In fact, the only way you can get malaria is by being bitten by a malaria carrying mosquito.
“The malaria parasite cannot be transmitted by contact. It has to go through the mosquito. And the mosquito carries the parasite from a mammal or a bird and then then it develops inside the mosquito and then transmits it to another person, when the mosquito is biting another person. The malaria parasite develops part of their life cycle in humans then the other part of their cycle develops in the mosquito.”
Of all the mosquitoes in the world, only relatively few of them transmit diseases, nevertheless, according to the World Health Organization, between 1.5 and 2.7 million people die of malaria each year.
Pulse of the Planet is presented by the American Museum of Natural History. Additional funding for this series has been provided by the National Science Foundation. I’m Jim Metzner.