Parasitology: The Bedbug's Big Bite

• Share

The bedbug has long been known to carry microbes capable of causing human disease, but with advances in hygiene and improvements in pesticides the problem seemed academic for many Western countries. Now, the great increase in tourist and business travel to undersanitized parts of the world means that the bedbug has to be taken seriously once again. And not only for its infuriating bite. Dr. George J. Burton, a medical entomologist for the U.S. Public Health Service who has studied bedbugs in India and British Guiana, says in Public Health Reports that the bedbug has been accused of carrying the microbes of no fewer than 30 infectious diseases: anthrax, brucellosis, epidemic cerebrospinal meningitis, leprosy, paratyphoid fever, plague, pneumococcal pneumonia, staphylococcal septicemia, tuberculosis, tularemia, typhoid fever, boutonneuse fever, epidemic typhus, exanthematous typhus, Q fever, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, relapsing fever, epidemic jaundice (Brazzaville), sleeping sickness, encephalomyelitis, influenza, lymphocytic choriomeningitis, poliomyelitis, smallpox, yellow fever, Chagas' disease, malaria, oriental sore, mansonelliasis, onchocerciasis.