You are walking down the streets back home and that gluttonous mosquito times your movements in the corridor, lands on your body and mercilessly pricks its proboscis (an elongated sucking mouth part that is typically tubular and flexible) inside your skin, what would you do?
Normally, whenever a mosquito bites your bare skin you will scratch it unless you have got pain courage, or what is referred to as mental fortitude.
Scratching will not stop the mosquito bites from itching and with this, doctors have advised usage of antihistamines as the most effective way according to scientific evidence.
There is ever a burning question as to why the female mosquito are the carriers of disease like malaria. The reason could be because they need your blood to grow eggs so the males have no reason to so. Anopheles mosquito usually bites and injects saliva under your skin.
This saliva contains anticoagulants that make your blood easier to slurp up. Their saliva triggers your immune system to release histamines to the bite, which leads to an inflammatory response that makes the area red and swollen, according to the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology.
When this occurs, itching effect is produced creating the urge to scratch. Under such circumstances the best thing to do is to opt not for scratching may break the skin creating an opening for bacteria that in the end may cause an infection.
For non-fortitude people, this may be too much to withstand. To cool down the itch you need to apply antihistamine or gel to the bitten area.
Studies have also shown that cold can reduce histamine-induced itching, so an ice cube can work in a pinch if you don’t have an antihistamine on hand.
With all the diseases you can catch from mosquitoes, like Zika virus and dengue fever, the ideal option, of course, is to not get bitten in the first place.
Make sure you spent your night under well treated mosquito net and stand as a champion in fighting Malaria.