Chagas Parasite Worrying State Health Officials
“Kissing bugs” could inspire a horror movie.
The beetle-like insects typically crawl out of walls at night, attracted by carbon dioxide people exhale while asleep. They bite the face and lips, gorge on blood, and defecate into the wound and transmit a parasite that causes a disease called Chagas.
It’s an example of how, even as the media furor over the recent Ebola scare in Dallas dies down, epidemiologists in Texas face new challenges from less virulent but still deadly diseases that are spreading due to shifting climate and population patterns.
Chagas is getting more scrutiny after it apparently claimed the life of a man in Dallas. He suffered damage to heart tissue that can develop years after a victim suffers the disease’s initial flu-like symptoms.
