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Do Mosquitoes Transmit Diseases to Humans?
Mosquitoes are known to transmit many diseases to man such as encephalitis, malaria, and yellow fever. These transmissions can occur because either the disease can multiply inside the mosquito or the disease can survive on the insect's biting parts. When the infected mosquito next bites, the disease is passed into the person's body, causing that person to become infected.
Is AIDS Transmitted By Mosquitoes?
The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) is very fragile. Exposure to conditions other than those found in the human body almost always causes the virus to die. Experiments in which mosquitoes were artificially fed with high concentrations of HIV-infected blood have shown that the AIDS virus does not multiply or survive in insects. Even under ideal laboratory conditions scientists have been unable to cause transmission of AIDS virus by insects. 80% of HIV infected people have no detectable levels of virus in their blood. The amount of HIV circulating in the blood of an infected person is very small - less than 10 infectious units per milliliter (A milliliter is approximately 1/5 of a teaspoon). A mosquito's biting parts hold less than one one-hundred thousandths (1/100,000) of a milliliter of blood (one five hundred thousandths of a teaspoon!).
For more information of mosquitoes, the diseases they transmit check out our brochures available online.
Further Reading Srinivasan, A., York, D., and Bohan, D. 1987 Lack of HIV Replication in Arthropod Cells. Lancet 1:1094-1095, 1987. Milke, L. 1987. Do Insects Transmit AIDS? Health Program Office of Technology Assessment, U.S. Congress Washington, D.C. Piot, P., and Schofield, C.J. 1986. No Evidence for Arthropod Transmission of AIDS. Parasitology Today 2:294. Reeves, W.C., Gomez, B., Cuevas, M., et al., 1987. Human T-Cell Lymphotropic Virus Type 1 (HTLV-1) Infection of Mosquitoes: No Evidence of In Vivo or in Vitro Infection. National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health: Betheda, Maryland
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