Why are bedbugs and their bites dangerous?

Bed bugs live in a person’s house and deliver him a lot of unpleasant moments at night. Why bugs are dangerous for humans and whether they can transmit any disease - the answer to such a question will interest everyone who at least once in their life has encountered this scourge.

How to bite a bug

The most exciting question for people: are bedbugs dangerous in the apartment? Consider how a parasite bites a person.

The adult is 5 mm in size and has a brown or reddish body color. During a bite, an insect injects anesthetizing enzymes with saliva, which is why a person himself bug bite almost does not feel. The parasite has no teeth, but only the proboscis through which it sucks the blood of the victim - about 7 ml in one session.

After saturation insect size increases almost 2 times, at this moment it becomes noticeable and vulnerable. Therefore, it is easiest to detect and kill in this state.

Interesting!

Home bugs are a worldwide problem, as evidenced by such statistics: in the USA, 80% of apartments over the past decades have been attacked by these harmful insects at least once. In Sweden, the capital of Stockholm holds the lead in the number of housing infected with these parasites, and in England there is an annual increase of 25% in specialist calls for treatment of housing from the invasion of bugs.

Consequences of a bite

Immediately after a bite, a person begins to feel a slight itching in a bitten place. For a long time, a similar symptom was considered the only consequence of bites of these parasites. However, this assumption turned out to be wrong. We will tell you why the bug bites are dangerous for a person and what consequences they can lead to.

Itching appears at the site of the bite, often it becomes inflamed, which can lead to serious troubles:

• when dirt enters the wound, an inflammatory or purulent process occurs;
• allergic reaction in humans to bedbugs - rash, runny nose, redness, and other symptoms, up to anaphylactic shock;

  

• in young children, numerous bites affect the decrease in hemoglobin in the blood;
• psychological problems that arise in particularly sensitive individuals who feel disgust and cannot tolerate the presence of blood-sucking parasites in their bed - nervous tics, nightly fears, entomophobia (panic fear), which affects the appearance of irritability, nervous breakdown even in a physically healthy person;
• insomnia, fatigue and, as a result, decreased performance.

Danger to children and pregnant women

Bedbug bites cause especially great harm to the health of children who have more delicate and thin skin. Allergic effects in babies are much more common than in adults. Children can not tolerate itching and begin to strongly comb the places of bites, causing infection in them. Therefore, parents should carefully monitor the condition of the child, reduce itching with medications or herbal remedies, use ointments from bedbugs.

Women during pregnancy become more vulnerable, so the reaction to the secret that the insect injects into the wound can manifest itself more intensely. The danger of severe discomfort and psychological trauma from the presence of vile parasites in your bed, allergic reactions - this is the reason that bedbug bites are dangerous for pregnant women.

Do bugs carry infection

For a long time it was believed that bed bugs are dangerous to humans by the fact that they can carry the infection. However, after a series of studies, scientists found that on the body of insects and in their litter can be pathogenic bacteria such as:

• relapsing fever typhus;
• tularemia;
• tuberculosis;
• yellow fever;
• syphilis;
• Hepatitis B;
• HIV

However, all these bacteria are processed in the body of the pest and cannot be transmitted through the blood to humans. The only way to get an infection is through the contact of a person’s hand and litter of bugs, but this probability is negligible.

Water species

Considering the question of what are the bugs harmful to humans, it is necessary to tell about other types of bugsthat live in nature are their aquatic and herbal varieties.

Bedbugs of middle and northern latitudes living in still or calm water come in several varieties:

• Giant water bug (smoothy) - refers to predators and reaches a size of 1-1.5 cm, floats in the water with its abdomen up, and with its eyes located on its back, it looks for prey at the bottom of the reservoir. Their distinctive feature is an air bubble that hangs at the end of the abdomen. He breathes this air. Such insects can bring harm to humans by stinging them, for which they have received the nickname "water wasp." Water bugs able to fly through the air from one reservoir to another and therefore widespread.
• Water striders - Frequently encountered residents of water bodies, puddles and even the sea are safe for humans.
• Rowing - also live in water, but swim with their backs up, size up to 16 mm. With the help of the front legs with tubercles they can chatter. They do not have a proboscis, but they eat through their mouths, helping themselves with their forelimbs. They can fly, starting right from the water.

On a note!

Of the three species into which water bugs are divided, only smoothies are a danger to humans. But they can only bite in case of danger, so touching them is not recommended.

But in the southern and tropical countries of Asia and America there are huge bugs of the Bialystomy up to 10 cm in size, which the locals call “alligator ticks”. They feed on tadpoles, small fish and fry, injecting into the bite site a poisonous substance that acts paralyzing. Then the parasite sucks all the substances from the body of the prey. For humans, such predators do not pose a threat.

Herbal species

Grass bugs live in forests, gardens, fields and gardens, eat vegetable juice. The question of whether the bug is grassy for humans seems strange because they only harm plants. It is small in size, only 7 mm, bright green or brown-black in color with a yellow head and prominent red eyes.

The grassy appearance of insects is not dangerous for the person himself, but for the garden crops planted by him, and he eats everything - leaves on trees, grass, flowers, berries and vegetables. With its strong reproduction, mass death of plants in the garden plot can occur.

Triatom bug

The most dangerous species is the American triatom bug, visually very similar to a bed bug. The danger of a bug bite of this kind is that it suffers a deadly disease - Chagas disease, in which the trypanosome parasite penetrates the blood of a person.

With its active reproduction, a strong intoxication of the human body occurs: fever, edema and death. For his deadly bite in his homeland he was nicknamed kiss a killer bug. The number of victims has already reached 300 thousand.human.

As follows from the above, only some species of bugs, mainly living in nature in distant countries, and not in an apartment, are harmful to humans. Most species can only cause temporary minor troubles.