This is scientific American 60 second science.

I'm Christopher in D'Alga.

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City dwellers across the US might agree on one common enemy, bed bugs. But hey, not to worry, right?

Bed bugs are not known to spread diseases, but bites can be very

itchy and irritating. Or so says the New York City Department of Health,

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 Chaugus disease.

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

The conditions usually spread by what's called the kissing bug, a relative of bedbugs,

which also feeds on blood.

But it doesn't pass the parasite through its saliva,

as happens with malaria, for example.

You get it when the bug bites you and then defecates on you.

The parasite is in the feces of the bug.

Michael Levy, a disease ecologist at the University of Pennsylvania.

Levy says scratching the bite then works the parasite into the skin, infecting the victim.

Levy and his colleagues wanted to see if the same thing could happen with bedbugs,

so they let them loose on mice that carried the Trepanosoma cruci parasite.

The bugs caught it, and were then able to transmit the

parasite back to mice. With one caveat, some mice actually hunted and ate the

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