Transmitted by bloodsucking kissing bugs, tropical Chagas disease—which afflicts millions in Central and South America—may affect more people in the U.S. than previously thought. Although doctors officially have recorded only seven cases of new human infections in North America, a new study found that five of 13 kissing bugs collected from California and Arizona had bitten a human host—and many of the bugs they collected were infected with Chagas.

Chagas, aka American trypanosomiasis, is a cryptic foe. After a person becomes infected, early symptoms—fever, a swollen eye—may be mistaken for any number of other ailments. The disease earns its moniker, the "silent killer," from its tendency to lie dormant in a person's system for years, even decades, until striking the victim down, usually through sudden heart or digestive failure.

Currently, the U.S. is relatively unaffected by Chagas transmission—but the new study gives researchers pause. "The dogma is that bugs and humans are quite separate in the U.S.," says Patricia Dorn, a molecular parasitologist at Loyola University New Orleans. "But now it seems that contact is not as rare as we thought," she says.

To investigate the threat of Chagas disease in the U.S., Dorn and colleagues collected kissing bugs in California and Arizona. Using a new analytical method, they identified which vertebrate species the bugs had parasitized by isolating fragments of DNA left over from blood meals. They cloned each DNA segment to separate out the species, such as chicken, wood rat and pig. They found that five of the insects contained human DNA, indicating they had bitten a person, and two of those insects had fed on two different people. Moreover, more than half the insects tested were infected with the Chagas parasite, the researchers reported in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases. This is a high percentage of bugs infected with the parasite, Dorn says, although infection prevalence in bugs varies enormously in different locations. In endemic areas such as Guatemala, for example, researchers usually find 25 to 30 percent of kissing bugs to be infected. A 55 percent parasite infection prevalence is not unheard of, however, and Dorn found a similar infection prevalence in Louisiana in 2007.

"To find out so many bugs were in fact feeding on humans suggests that maybe there are a lot of cases we don't know about," says Lori Stevens, a biologist at the University of Vermont who developed the analytical method used in the study.

Trypanosoma cruzi, the protozoan responsible for Chagas disease, bides its time in a kissing bug's gut. Like cockroaches, kissing bugs are nocturnal insects that hide in cracks and crevices during daytime or when lights are on at night. After the lights go off, kissing bugs crawl into bed with the slumbering inhabitant and take a blood meal, often sucking around the victim’s mouth or eyes. Unlike a mosquito, however, it is not the kissing bug's suction mouthparts that transmit disease—it is its feces that teem with T. cruzi. As the bug feeds it defecates; later the sleeping victim often scratches the bite, rubbing the feces into the open wound or into the eyes or mouth.

North America has so far been spared from this plague for a number of reasons: The 11 species of kissing bugs endemic to the U.S. South and Southwest tend to defecate after leaving their unwitting hosts, reducing the likelihood of spreading the parasite. They also tend to inhabit areas or wilderness where few humans live. Finally, in Central and South America, the disease is most prevalent in rural homes made of mud or covered by thatched roofs—such architecture, which makes perfect hideouts for the pests, is not typical of U.S. homes.

1 Comments

1. 1. ironjustice 12:55 PM 4/11/12

   Chagas and other parasites need an iron source for food.
   "Trypanosoma cruzi: in vivo evaluation of iron in skin"
   "Trypanosoma cruzi: desferrioxamine decreases mortality and parasitemia in infected mice"
   They have shown iron deficiency protects from malaria , another parasite.
   "Iron Deficiency Protects Against Severe Plasmodium falciparum Malaria and Death in Young Children."
   
   They have shown by giving iron to people with malaria leads to higher death.
   "Risks of iron supplementation for children in areas of malaria transmission"
   
   They have hypothesised iron reduction to be the next thing in anti-viral , anti-bacterial , anti-parasitical treatment and anti-cancer intervention.
   "The study of iron chelators as anti-tumor agents "
   "Antimicrobial activities of lactoferrin with particular emphasis on antibacterial and antiviral
   activities, although its antifungal and -parasitic activity are also discussed."
   
   High iron levels leave one susceptible to malaria , hepatitis , etc ?
   ALSO , the malaria mosquito is attracted by microbes and the growth of different microbes are governed by the amount of iron in your sweat ?
   "Individuals with diverse skin microbiota at lower risk of contracting malaria"
   "Lactobacillus plantarum, an organism not requiring iron"
   They are adding iron chelators to anti-perspirants to remove the iron from the bacteria which uses it to grow on the skin , leaving us with the idea iron DOES feed bacteria which , smell.
   "Starving the bacteria that cause body odour of the iron they need to grow may soon arm deodorants with an extra stink-stopping weapon."

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