Is it safe to swat a mosquito?

This question gained unlikely prominence this week, thanks to Christina Coyle and her colleagues at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine in New York.

The team reported in the New England Journal of Medicine that a woman who died of a muscular fungal infection, probably met her fate after smearing a mosquito into her skin.

Mosquitoes are carriers of fungus-like parasites called Brachiola algerae, which in rare cases can cause such infections. The verdict from the scientists is kill carefully: flick mosquitoes from your skin, don't just squash them dead.

But according to Gordon Leitch, an expert on Brachiola species at the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia, encouraging the world's inhabitants to change their preferred method of execution is a little rash.

"There have been three, at most four, infections from Brachiola ever, and I mean ever," Leitch says. Of these, one was a simple skin infection, another an infection of the eye, unlikely to be caused by a mosquito bite. Leitch recommends the insects be dealt with swiftly. "Swat the little buggers," he says.

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