Researchers are reporting an alarming combination: bedbugs carrying a staph "superbug."
Being Scary Disease Girl, I seem to have earned a reputation for never wincing in the face of weird disease threats.
But this, I admit, makes me go squick:
Researchers in Vancouver, BC have found bedbugs there carrying drug-resistant staph, MRSA, and vancomycin-resistant enterococci, VRE.
(Deep breath.)
(Another deep breath.)
OK, details:
In the June issue of the CDC journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, Christopher F. Lowe of the University of Toronto and Marc G. Romney of the University of British Columbia relay an observation they have made about bedbugs being carried by three patients who live on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside — a neighborhood they describe as “an impoverished community in Vancouver with high rates of homelessness, poverty, HIV/AIDS, and injection drug use.”
The US CDC believes that crowding, poor hygiene and skin disruption increase the likelihood of MRSA infection; crowding and poor hygiene are common in homelessness and shelter living, and bedbugs by definition disrupt the skin’s barrier by their bites. Meanwhile, in the ill and hospitalized, VRE frequently causes infections in disrupted skin, such as a surgical incision or a diabetic ulcer.
…These insects may act as a hidden environmental reservoir for MRSA and may promote the spread of MRSA in impoverished and overcrowded communities. Bedbugs carrying MRSA and/or VRE may have the potential to act as vectors for transmission.
And therefore, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go check my hotel mattress. Just in case.
Maryn McKenna is a journalist for national magazines and the author of SUPERBUG and BEATING BACK THE DEVIL. She finds emerging diseases strangely exciting.
Follow @marynmck on Twitter.
No comments:
Post a Comment