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Science Quickly

Worse Than the Bite

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.2639 Ratings

🗓️ 20 November 2014

⏱️ 3 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A new study suggests bed bugs can transmit Chagas disease to mice—but the same thing is unlikely to happen in humans. Christopher Intagliata reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

0:05.8

Researchers at Yachtolt have been delving into the secrets of probiotics for 90 years.

0:11.0

Yacold also partners with nature portfolio to advance gut microbiome science through the global grants for gut health, an investigator-led research program.

0:19.6

To learn more about Yachtolt, visit yawcult.co.

0:22.7

J-P. That's Y-A-K-U-L-T.C-O.J-P. When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on Yacolt.

0:33.4

This is Scientific American 60-second science. I'm Christopher Ndalata. Got a minute?

0:39.6

City dwellers across the U.S. might agree on one common enemy, bedbugs. But hey, not to worry, right?

0:46.8

Bedbugs are not known to spread diseases, but bites can be very itchy and irritating.

0:51.5

Or so says the New York City Department of Health.

0:59.6

But that assertion may not be true, because a new study suggests bedbugs could be capable of spreading infection, specifically by passing on the parasite that causes Chagas disease.

1:05.1

Chagas can cause anything from mild headaches to eventual heart failure.

1:09.1

The conditions usually spread by what's called the kissing bug,

1:12.3

a relative of bedbugs, which also feeds on blood. But it doesn't pass the parasite through its saliva,

1:18.6

as happens with malaria, for example. You get it when the bug bites you and then defecates on you.

1:24.4

The parasite is in the feces of the bug. Michael Levy, a disease ecologist at the

1:29.2

University of Pennsylvania. Levy says scratching the bite then works the parasite into the skin,

1:34.3

infecting the victim. Levy and his colleagues wanted to see if the same thing could happen with

1:39.3

bedbugs, so they let them loose on mice that carried the tropanosoma cruci parasite.

1:48.7

The bugs caught it, and were then able to transmit the parasite back to mice.

1:54.7

With one caveat, some mice actually hunted and ate the bugs, a sure route for infection.

2:01.0

People don't eat bedbugs, so we're not really at risk being infected through the oral root by bedbugs. That said, one mouse actually did catch the disease, not by snacking, but through a bedbug

2:06.2

bite, more analogous to the way a human might.

...

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