Bed Bugs, Kissing Bugs Linked to Deadly Chagas Disease in U.S.
Every year, millions of hearts in south america are quietly damaged by these parasites that are carried by these insects called kissing bugs. the bugs can live in the mud and stick houses by the hundreds and they like to bite their sleeping victims. they then defecate near the punctured skin and wriggling wormlike parasites come out of the feces and enter the wound, then most likely they will head to the victims heart.
In about one third of the victims the parasites damage the victims organs for decades before they cause potential heart disease. this disease kills about 12,000 people every year and it is called chagas disease. many american scientists thought that people in america were safe from this disease because they have sturdier homes that are not made of mud and stick. the scientists could not be more wrong.
the chagas infected kissing bugs like to enter southern homes and bite the inhabitants that are there, that's what recent studies suggest. and a new study published two years ago, indicated there is another specter of chagas from another insect pest we all know. Bed bugs, they are found all throughout the country and the biting bedbugs have been found to transmit the parasite through mice.
the bed bug effect has not been an epidemic among people, but this new study has made some physicians and scientists wonder if they have underestimated this parasite and underestimated the possibility of aquiring chagas In our country, they believe an system survey of the high risk population is needed that is a sentiment that is repeatedly said by one CDC scientist, he said, " we know that people have a chance of aquiring this disease in the us but it is not common.
the parasitic diseases branch at the CDC do know that eight million people in central and south america and over 300,000 immigrants are infected with the chagas disease The washinton post reports that health officials found 17 Houston residents who had been infected with Chagas, a disease native to Latin America that is spread to humans through contact with the parasitic triatomine bug, or so-called kissing bug.
The tiny insect feeds on human blood by biting people’s faces during the night. It carries a
