Skin emanations of 48 volunteers were collected by rubbing a foot over glass beads. Previously the attractiveness of these emanations to An. gambiae was determined. In this study, the chemical composition of these emanations was determined by gas chromatography-mass spectroscopy (GC-MS) and blood samples of all volunteers were taken for HLA analysis. Hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA), partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA), Fisher¡¯s exact test and random forest regression were used to test for correlations between individuals classified as either highly or poorly attractive to mosquitoes and their HLA profile and volatile composition.
HLA profiling suggests that people carrying HLA gene Cw?07 are more attractive to mosquitoes. GC-MS revealed that limonene, 2-phenylethanol and 2-ethyl-1-hexanol were associated with individuals that were poorly attractive to An. gambiae and lactic acid, 2-methylbutanoic acid, tetradecanoic acid and octanal with individuals that were highly attractive. Such compounds offer potential for disruption of mosquito behavior in malaria intervention programs.