Location: Eastern Ontario | My niece has a PHD in Pharmacology ( sp)and works in drug research. I recently emailed her about Defend insect patches or taking vitamin B1 below are portions of the emails
Hi xxxxx>
> xxxxx bought some Defend Insect Patches for me which are said to containe
> 75mg Thiamine and last 30 hours. Does Thiamine have any effect on insects?
>
> Would taking Jamieson B1 100mg tablets have the same effect and be
> worthwhile?
Hi Uncle Frank,
I looked into this a bit and this is what I found:
Some old studies suggested that the ingestion of large doses of
thiamin could be effective as an oral insect repellent against
mosquito bites. However, there is now conclusive evidence that thiamin
has no efficacy against mosquito bites.
Vitamin B is often recommended in the popular media as a systemic
repellent against mosquitoes. This information is especially prevalent
on the Web. The results of a small number of published studies
suggested that vitamin B complex supplements are not effective as
repellents, but these studies were limited by the use of very few
human subjects and only 1 species of mosquito, Aedes aegypti. We
extended this work with the use of larger samples of human subjects
and with Anopheles stephensi as the test organism. We tested whether
ingestion of vitamin B supplements under various regimens affected the
attractiveness of volatile skin components transferred to glass vials.
Although there was substantial and consistent individual variation in
attractiveness, we found no effect of vitamin B supplementation.
You have to be careful about claims that companies make. The Defend
Insect Patches do not have to prove that they work...they only have to
prove that they can't harm you. Vitamin B cannot help against
mosquitoes. DEET has reigned as the most efficacious and broadly used
repellent for the last 6 decades, with a strong safety record and
excellent protection against ticks, mosquitoes, and other arthropods.
Newer agents, like picaridin and natural products such as oil of lemon
eucalyptus are becoming increasingly popular because of their low
toxicity, comparable efficacy, and customer approval. If you want
something less toxic than DEET, I would try Oil of lemon eucalyptus.
>
Edited by horsehunter 7/7/2011 4:15 PM
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