REWahoo
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give
Time for me to update "Reasons you don't want to move to Texas"...
The kissing bug may have the most misleadingly cute name in entomology. It bites, rather than smooches, its victims around the mouth or face. But far worse than the bite itself is what may find its way into it: wriggling worm-like parasitic protists called Trypanosoma cruzi that teem in the feces of these bugs, which they deposit without regard for their victims directly onto their face. The parasites may get rubbed into the wound by a sleeper scratching either bite or bug, and eventually burrow into victims’ hearts. There they riddle the tissue for decades, feeding on blood or lymph and triggering a cascade of events that may cause fatal heart disease decades later in about a third of victims.
Americans May Be More at Risk from Deadly Heart Parasite Than Realized | Scientific American Blog NetworkUntil now, Americans were thought to be safe from the pernicious parasite and its persistent host unless they travelled to Latin America, where the disease is common. Now, scientists are coming to the uneasy realization that some Americans — at least in hot spots like southeast Texas — may be more vulnerable to infection right here at home than previously suspected. And not just from kissing bugs, but perhaps also from a hitherto unsuspected source: bed bugs.