Bed Bug a Super Bug Vector

This story has picked up a lot of traction and reminds us that the lowly, long forgotten bed bug is a pretty good vector of disease transmission.  They certainly have the time to make an impact whereas a mosquito is into short hit and run attacks thus limiting their effect.

We certainly need to study their real effectiveness if these results are any indication of their role.

In the meantime, the war on bed bugs will continue with increased energy.  Removal remains the best option, although I would like to see proper ozone treatment fully implemented to cleanse living environments.  The surprising recovery of bed bug populations comes as a surprise and it is hard to attribute a creditable cause to that because all proposed causes have always been with us. 

Study finds new bedbug worry

By Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY

A finding of a dangerous, drug-resistant bacteria in bedbugs in western Canada could raise concerns in U.S. urban areas that have experienced a resurgence of the blood-sucking insects in the past decade.

By Alex Brandon, AP

http://yourlife.usatoday.com/health/story/0/study-finds-new-bedbug-worry/47081656/1

Canadian scientists detected MRSA bacteria in three bedbugs from Vancouver hospital patients.

The actual findings of the study, however, are less frightening than they might initially sound.

"It's not time to push the panic button. It's a very small study," said Marc Romney, one of the study's authors and a medical microbiologist at St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver.

Doctors at the inner-city hospital had noticed two things happening in their neighborhood— a boom in bedbugs and a boom in cases of MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, a bacterial infection highly resistant to some antibiotics.

To see whether there was a connection, the researchers took five bedbugs that patients had brought in and crushed and analyzed them.

The researchers found MRSA on three of them. On the other two they found VRE — vancomycin-resistant enterococcus faecium, a less dangerous form of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Bedbugs, known to scientists at cimicidae, are small parasitic insects that feed on human or animal blood.

Their bites can cause itching, red welts and can lead to excessive scratching which can break the skin. They are not known to spread disease.

Since 1995, bedbugs have experienced an upsurge in growth in many urban areas, invading apartment buildings, hotels and dormitory rooms. The infestations have led to almost-hysterical fear in some neighborhoods.

Romney said it is not clear whether the bacteria originated with the bedbugs or the bugs picked them up from people who were already infected.

Both germs are often seen in hospitals. And experts have been far more worried about nurses and other health care workers spreading the bacteria than insects, Romney said, which is why the finding is disturbing, if inconclusive.

The possibility exists that if an infected bedbug were to find its way onto the skin of a human who already had bites and had broken skin from scratching, the infection could be transferred.

Not that the researchers found evidence of this.

"It's an intriguing finding" that needs to be further researched, Romney said.

He said he has been swamped with phone calls from the United States because of the growing concern about bedbugs.

The study was published Wednesday in Emerging Infectious Diseases, a publication of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.