Not all repellents are equal – here's how to avoid mosquito bites this summer

Now that summer is in full swing, mosquitoes have come out across the United States. The use of mosquito repellents can protect both your health and sanity this summer. While mosquitoes leave bothersome, itchy bites on your skin, they can also pose a serious and sometimes deadly risk to your health. When a mosquito bites you, it may transmit harmful pathogens that cause dangerous diseases like malaria, Dengue fever, Zika and West Nile.

Avoiding mosquito bites

• One single blood meal can give rise to about 100 mosquito eggs that hatch into wiggling larvae.
• Our team at the New Mexico State University Molecular Vector Physiology Laboratory has studied different types of mosquito repellents and their efficacy for over a decade.

All about repellents

• Some of the oldest records of the use of mosquito repellents date back to early Egyptian and Roman history.
• Scientists understand how certain repellents like DEET work at the molecular level, but for many of them, it is still unknown why exactly they repel mosquitoes.

Testing repellents

• For some products, testing was as simple as putting a volunteer’s treated arm into a cage with 25 mosquitoes and waiting for the first mosquito bite.
• For others, like citronella candles, we used a slow-speed wind tunnel and put a candle or device between a person and a cage of mosquitoes.

Mosquito repellents that don’t work

• Even if they are loaded with repellents, they can’t protect your whole body from mosquito bites.
• In fact, when our lab tested one of these devices, we found a slight increase in mosquito attraction to the wearer.
• Dietary supplements – vitamin B, garlic and so on – don’t work.
• Light-based repellents don’t work.

Mosquito repellents that work

And here is our ranking of what does work, starting with the best repellent/active ingredient.
Other essential oils – some work, some not so much. We applied 20 different essential oils in a 10% essential oil lotion mixture to volunteers’ skin. Here’s what we found:
• Based on our study, we recommend using repellents with the active ingredient DEET if you live in or are traveling to regions with a high risk of vector-borne disease transmission.
• However, plant-based repellents will work just fine to prevent nuisance mosquito bites in low-risk areas, as long as you reapply them as needed.