Many people ask questions like Can mosquitoes transmit HIV as it spreads other diseases like malaria, chikungunya, dengue?
Why mosquitoes can’t transmit HIV to human?
Full form of HIV is Human Immunodeficiency Virus, the name itself suggest that it only infect human.
After entering into the human body HIV cannot replicate or reproduce on its own. It needs cells of the immune system of humans. called CD4 cells.
Mosquitoes don’t have CD4 cells or receptors that HIV needs to recognize and infect human cells.
So after sucking the blood of HIV infected person the viruses are completely digested or destroyed in mosquito gut or stomach in a lack of CD4 cells.
Another important point is the sucking or feeding mechanism of mosquitoes. They have a needle-like structure known as proboscis which has two tubes.
One tube is used to suck blood and another tube for injecting saliva into humans. This means they only inject saliva into the human body, not the blood & HIV can’t be transmitted through saliva.
In 3rd point, Let’s assume that after the bite of HIV infected person, mosquito's proboscis is stained with blood, and the same mosquito bites another person. What happens in this case?
In this case also it is not possible to transmit HIV. Because HIV isn’t very contagious. It needs a large number of viruses to be transmitted from one to another people.
Again if there is a possibility to transmit HIV in such a way, they have to get more than 1 million bites in order to enter HIV into your body & it is difficult for one mosquito to bite as many times.
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