This is scientific Americans 60 second science. I'm Karen Hopkins. This will just take a minute.

Getting malaria stinks. Literally. According to a new study, malaria victims give off odors that attract mosquitoes.

The insects that feed on the infected sufferer are then more likely to spread the disease.

The work appears in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Malaria is caused by

plasmodium parasites which are transmitted by mosquitoes. A decade ago, scientists

found that Kenyan kids infected with plasmodium were more attractive to

mosquitoes than were kids who were parasite free.

But they didn't know what drew the bloodsuckers to the infected children.

To find out, researchers took mice that harbored the rodent version of malaria and put the animals in a wind chamber.

And they found that mosquitoes flock toward the infected animals attracted by their smell alone.

By chemically analyzing the animal's sense,

the researchers found that the parasites boost the level of a variety of odorous... the to get itself spread far and wide. The finding may help with malaria prevention.

If we can mask or harness the owed to infection,

maybe we could nose the mosquitoes away from people.

Thanks for the minute.

For Scientific Americans 60 Second Science, I'm Karen Hopkins.