Free-roaming Kissing Bugs, Vectors of Chagas Disease, Feed Often on Humans in the Southwest

Abstract

Background

Kissing bugs, vectors of Trypanosoma cruzi, the parasite that causes Chagas disease, are common in the desert Southwest. After a dispersal flight in summer, adult kissing bugs occasionally gain access to houses where they remain feeding on humans and pets. How often wild, free-roaming kissing bugs feed on humans outside their homes has not been studied. This is important because contact of kissing bugs with humans is one means of gauging the risk for acquisition of Chagas disease.

Eleven species of hematophagous kissing bugs are found in the United States, and all potentially harbor Trypanosoma cruzi, the parasite that causes Chagas disease. Kissing bug home ranges extend northward into the bottom two thirds of the United States; however, the nearest endemic area of Chagas disease in humans is in Mexico.1 Yet, with climate change and possible changes in the behavior of kissing bugs, there is a potential for an increase in the number of vector-transmitted human infections with T. cruzi in the United States.2

Adult kissing bugs in the Southwest undergo a dispersal flight before the monsoon rains during the hottest days of summer and are attracted to lights near and on houses,3 which they may enter beneath door thresholds and through window casings and feed on pet and human inhabitants (Figure 1). This occasionally leads to human anaphylaxis4 or, rarely, infection, in the United States. Kissing bugs are nuisances in homes in San Diego, California, and Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona.4

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To read the related editorial “Are We Cuddling up to Kissing Bugs” follow this link.

–Stephen A. Klotz, MD, Justin O. Schmidt, PhD, Patricia L. Dorn, PhD, Craig Ivanyi, MS, Katherine R. Sullivan, BS, Lori Stevens, PhD

This article originally appeared in the May 2014 issue of The American Journal of Medicine.