The best news I heard this week

                                                                     June 13, 2000          

                                      Mosquitoes find pregnant women delicious

                  If you're pregnant and the mosquitoes seem to love you more than ever, it's not just your imagination.
                               Mosquitoes are especially drawn to expectant moms, according to a recent study published in
                                 The Lancet.

                                    Steve Lindsay, the study's lead researcher, and colleagues from England's University of
                             Durham studied 72 women (half of them pregnant) in Gambia and found that the pregnant women
                               attracted twice as many mosquitoes. Why? Lindsay says mosquitoes are attracted to carbon
                                  dioxide, and pregnant women tend to take more frequent breaths than other women do.
                          These heat-seeking insects also head for expectant mothers, Lindsay says, because the women have
                        "a little furnace in them — the fetus."

                                                                                    -     By Jenn Director Knudsen

                                                                                    HOME