Texas Kissing Bugs Carry Dangerous Disease
When you kiss a frog you get your prince, right? Well, that logic doesn’t work for kissing bugs, or assassin bugs, which can transmit a disease that threatens hearts and GI tracts to humans with one peck. Adding insult to injury, these blood-sucking insects have a very un-romantic technique: They bite, then drop their feces onto the wound. This often transfers the parasite via the blood stream to the heart and gastrointestinal system.
A recent study by the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) found that kissing bugs, Triatoma rubida, which are commonly found in West Texas and near the Mexican border, carry the dangerous Chagas disease in higher percentages than previously thought. Sixty-one percent of the bugs collected in the study carried the Chagas-causing parasite known as Trypanosoma cruzi (T. cruzi). This is a threat to individuals and pets in the 650,000 metro population in El Paso, on the high-traffic Texas-Mexico border, according to a release.
These findings were recently published in the journal Acta Tropica.
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