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Posts Tagged ‘medicine’

The mosquito pill

July 20th, 2010 2 comments

I am, right now, covered in mosquito bites. Whilst I was being savagely attacked on Sunday, something occurred to me.

The itchiness of a mosquito bite comes from the fact that the mosquito injects some saliva before drawing blood. This acts as an anticoagulant, amongst a few other things. Wikipedia says that this saliva compound is fairly simple, and it’s definitely what causes the itchiness.

I would be quite happy giving some blood to a few mosquitos if their saliva did not cause irritation. Surely, therefore, we ought to be able to find some sort of a medication we could take which would prevent the irritative aspect of mosquito saliva, but not actually prevent us being bitten?

Obviously there are some tricky details to be worked out but, well, get to it.

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