Enjoying a cold beer on a hot day may lead to itchy skin.<\/p>\n
Not because of the drink but the mosquitoes hovering around and about to sting you.<\/p>\n
Researchers in the Netherlands set up shipping containers as a pop-up laboratory at Lowlands, one of the biggest music festivals in the country, in August 2023.<\/p>\n
Those who were willing to take part in the Mosquito Magnet Trial, more than 500 volunteers, filled out a questionnaire about their diet, hygiene, drug and alcohol use, and behaviour before the test subjects placed their arms inside a special cage containing female mosquitoes. The insects could smell the skin but were unable to sting through the tiny holes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Mosquito Magnet Trial, to our knowledge the largest study of its kind, was conducted in a loosely controlled setting with a selection bias towards science loving festivalgoers,\u201d researchers wrote in the study published at bioRxiv.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n A camera tracked how many of the bugs landed on the cage and a computer tabulated the score for each individual.<\/p>\n The team noticed that those who drank beer were 1.35 times more likely to be bitten. In addition, smoking weed and sleeping with someone also boosted people\u2019s magnetism to the insects.<\/p>\n