Resurgent bedbugs don't spread disease

[xiblanque]

Hi Everybody!!!
This whole mess started for me with Bedbugs. I must admit though as I struggled to clear my home I never found a single bedbug. There is a huge resurgence of bedbugs right now. Pest control companies seem unable to stop this menace. With all the new reports of bedbugs I am wondering how many people really have seen what was biting them. Does anyone here have a similar story I wonder? Now this story is saying that bedbugs do not spread blood-borne diseases... how is that possible? If a bedbug uses it's "beak" to pierce the skin and access the blood of someone infected with Hep B or any b/b disease, how is that not transmitable to the next person bitten?
Xib

Resurgent bedbugs don't spread disease, just the willies - DailyHerald.com
By Burt Constable ..

The most common question overheard at the sold-out North American Bed Bug Summit summit starting today in Rosemont might just be, "How's your hotel?"

Once relegated to third-world nations, grandparents' memories and old nursery rhymes, bedbugs have enjoyed a resurgence more dramatic and surprising than the Bears' Super Bowl hopes. The bloodsucking pests are popping up everywhere from homeless shelters to four-star hotels.

Advertisement That's creepy news in the suburbs, where every business trip, softball tourney, college dorm, summer camp or sleepover could result in a bedbug infestation at home.

"Ten years ago we got about one call about bedbugs a year, and now we get at least one call a day," says Melaney Arnold, spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Public Health.

Bedbugs have been around as long as man. Wingless and only about a quarter-inch long, the bugs used to hide in caves and drink the blood of the bats that lived there. When early man moved into those caves, some of the bugs developed a thirst for human blood and evolved into a separate species with the scientific name of Cimex Lectularius.

"They were a big deal 60 or 70 years ago," says Curt Colwell, entomologist with the Illinois Department of Public Health. "They were more of a big deal than cockroaches."

Pesticides curbed the bedbug populations after World War II.

"I'm an entomologist and up until about the last five years, I saw one or two bedbugs in my life, and they were dead," says Colwell.

The United States is experiencing "an alarming resurgence in the population of bedbugs," according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, because the pests have developed a resistance to pesticides and are able to spread so much faster because of increased international travel.

"Bedbugs are hitchhikers in backpacks and purses," says Colwell, warning that the tiny bugs hide and lay eggs in the crevices of suitcases, mattresses, box springs, curtains, baseboards, picture frames, peeling wallpaper, furniture, door frames, baseboards, clothes and other hiding places. "You could easily bring one or a dozen back in your luggage from an infected hotel."

The bugs don't spread malaria or other blood-borne diseases (???). Their beaklike mouths generally pierce the skin without causing enough pain to wake their victims.

"They come out at 2 in the morning when you are least alert, feed on you for 5 minutes or so, and then go back into hiding," Colwell says. "A high percentage of people don't react at all."

A few might react with quarter-size welts that could develop a secondary infection. Others may only discover the problem after getting a whiff of a musty raspberry fragrance, finding tiny exoskeletons left by molting bugs or seeing the rusty blood spots of bedbug fecal matter left on their bed. None of which generally causes physical health problems, but certainly weighs on the mind.

"It's an emotional problem because there is no one out there who wants bugs feeding on them during the night," Colwell says, noting the bugs lead to anxiety and insomnia. Since bedbugs don't spread diseases, most public health departments (including Illinois') don't require residents, landlords or hotels to report infestations.

"That's sort of part of the problem. There is nothing that says who is responsible," Colwell says. Not only are experts unsure of all the areas with bedbugs or how many there are, "we don't have it defined what percent of bedbugs are resistant (to pesticides) or to what degree they are resistant."

While professional pest experts generally can eliminate a bedbug infestation, the bugs are hardy and, if the conditions are right, can survive for more than a year between feedings, Colwell says. They can crawl along pipes to go between rooms and "will sometimes walk underneath your door, walk down the hall and go under somebody else's door."

Hotels and motels have developed a protocol for preventing and eliminating bedbugs, says Jim Gould, general manager of the Hyatt Regency Woodfield, regional vice president of operations for Portfolio Hotels and Resorts, and chairman of the Illinois Hotel and Lodging Association.

"The hotel association provides training on bedbugs, information to our members and services that helps remove bedbugs," says Gould, who adds that he's only heard of bedbugs at one suburban hotel, which is no longer in business. "We want to help make sure bedbugs are not an issue at hotels. It's a vigilant effort on the part of the housekeepers knowing what to look for when they clean the room."

Lots of folks get the willies just thinking about bedbugs, which can set off the same alarms in suburban households as kids with head lice.

"Bedbugs are worse because you know where the lice are. They are on your head," Colwell says, noting lice die after a few days off a head. "Bedbugs can be everywhere."

Prevention is easier and cheaper than removal, which often costs as much as $1,000, Colwell says. Since the bugs don't chew through barriers, a simple mattress cover can confine any bugs to your mattress, where they eventually will die. But Colwell takes further precautions whenever he spends the night at a hotel.

"The first thing I do is pull the headrest away from the wall (and look for bedbugs)," Colwell says. "I take in as little as possible, and what I bring in I seal in garbage bags overnight, or even double-bag it."

Even with the resurgence, most people have never seen a bedbug. Some probably assumed bedbugs were a myth akin to monsters under the bed after hearing the "Sleep tight, and don't let the bedbugs bite" mantra as kids.

"We all grew up listening to that and not know what it really meant," Colwell says. "Now we do."

[Baraka Obam]

You feel you had bed bugs because when you went and layed down it felt like you were covered by bugs, that is just the nature of this disease.

You never found bugs because, lets say it together, they were NOT there.

The people that are complaining of bed bugs most likely have so called MORGELLONS.

They have to have other excuses for itching other than DOP, well let them complain a little more about it, then they can be DOP.

GOT BUGS? LOL

[xiblanque]

exactly!!!
With this so called "epidemic of bedbugs" and the Gulf of Mexico "Blue Flu" there are now two "Legitimate" causes for Morgellons-like symptoms. These may be the correct diagnosis for some... however, two more excuses for people to get poor, incorrect treatment and two more dead-end avenues for people to travel down before they realize something isn't quite right with their personal diagnosis. I also believe that the earlier one begins to correct the imbalances involved with Morgellons the better prognosis for remission. So, many people might struggle with M longer before coming to terms with it.
Xib

[tcmgpt13]

The connection between bedbug’s spreading diseases to humans may not yet have been absolutely proven, but this connection seems to be suspected. Evidently some studies are ongoing:

Bedbug Bites: eMedicine Dermatology

Mortality/Morbidity

Bedbug bites can create considerable anxiety and localized and occasionally systemic reactions. Sometimes, if the bite reactions are intensely pruritic, scratching with excoriations may be complicated by impetigo.

Bedbugs may be a vector for hepatitis B6 and, in endemic areas, for American trypanosomiasis (Chagas disease).7 Of note, reports have indicated the risk of insect transmission of HIV, if any, is extremely low and likely nonexistent.8,9

Anaphylactoid reactions are well described. One case of an anaphylactoid reaction occurred in a 41-year-old businessman in a first-class urban hotel in America.

Bed Bugs Symptoms, Causes, Treatment - What about bed bugs in hotels on MedicineNet

Bed bugs have not been conclusively proven to carry infectious microbes. However, researchers have implicated bed bugs as possible vectors of American trypanosomiasis (Chagas disease), and studies are ongoing to determine whether bed bugs may serve as disease carriers.

Bed bugs are known to have from 27-41 disease organisms in their bodies. It does not appear as if diseases are easily passed, but then lyme can be a ticking time b too. I hope more serious study will be done since bed bug outbreaks are everywhere:


A l s o , W i k i p e d i a s t a t e s :

B e d b u g s s e e m t o p o s s e s s a l l o f t h e n e c e s s a r y p r e r e q u i s i t e s f o r b e i n g c a p a b l e o f p a s s i n g d i s e a s e s f r o m o n e h o s t t o a n o t h e r , b u t t h e r e h a v e b e e n n o k n o w n c a s e s o f b e d b u g s p a s s i n g d i s e a s e f r o m h o s t t o h o s t . T h e r e a r e a t l e a s t t w e n t y - s e v e n k n o w n p a t h o g e n s ( s o m e e s t i m a t e s a r e a s h i g h a s f o r t y - o n e ) t h a t a r e c a p a b l e o f l i v i n g i n s i d e a b e d b u g o r o n i t s m o u t h p a r t s . E x t e n s i v e t e s t i n g h a s b e e n d o n e i n l a b o r a t o r y s e t t i n g s t h a t a l s o c o n c l u d e t h a t b e d b u g s a r e u n l i k e l y t o p a s s d i s e a s e f r o m o n e p e r s o n t o a n o t h e r . ( S e a n R o l l o T h e B e d B u g R e s o u r c e " C a n b e d b u g s p a s s d i s e a s e s ? " 2 0 0 7 ]

T h e r e f o r e b e d b u g s a r e l e s s d a n g e r o u s t h a n s o m e m o r e c o m m o n i n s e c t s s u c h a s t h e f l e a . H o w e v e r , t r a n s m i s s i o n o f C h a g a s d i s e a s e o r h e p at i t i s B m i g h t b e p o s s i b l e i n a p p r o p r i a t e s e t t i n g s . ( R o b e r t A S c h w a r t z M D , M P H E M e d i c i n e " B e d b u g b i t e s " 2 8 M a r c h 2 0 0 7 )

Information about bedbugs from the NIH. It appears that effective chemical controls have been removed from the market, for this insect pest as well as for others. Once again, an example of the environment being considered more important than humans. Radical environmentalism. Pantheism or nature as god. This is why so many people in developing nations have malaria now whereas for years it had been in decline with the use of DDT:

Environmental Health Perspectives: Invasion of the Bedbugs

Bedbugs are not known to transmit disease except for possible associations with hepatitis B4 and Chagas disease.5 They are classified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as “a pest of significant public health importance” under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act.6

Experts are not certain of the cause for the bedbug resurgence. The increased movement of people domestically and internationally is thought to be one factor. Another is the resistance bedbugs have developed to pesticides. “Bedbugs have been treated so many times, they have developed a resistance to commercially available products allowed for use by the EPA,” says Dini Miller, an associate professor of entomology at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

Propoxur (sold as Baygon®) is one commercially available chemical that is still effective in killing bedbugs. This carbamate pesticide is widely used in commercial settings in the United States and was once approved for use in residential environments. However, propoxur is toxic to humans if ingested. Pesticide manufacturers, recognizing that indoor use of certain pesticides would not pass the more stringent testing requirements under the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA) of 1996, agreed to drop their registration of propoxur for residential use.

The removal of propoxur and similar pesticides has left pest management companies with a limited array of tools to combat infestations. Steamers and rapid freezing equipment will kill bedbugs on contact. But the insects are experts at hiding, and repeated treatments are required to be effective. At an NPMA-estimated cost of $500–1,200 per session, such treatments are unaffordable for many people.