The bed bug may be just as dangerous as its sinister cousin, the triatomine, or "kissing" bug. A new study from Penn Medicine researchers in the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics demonstrated that bed bugs, like the triatomines, can transmit Trypanosoma cruzi, the parasite that causes Chagas disease, one of the most prevalent and deadly diseases in the Americas. Click here to read the recent NPMA industry alert regarding this issue.
 

Over the last decade there has been a growing interest in the use of biological control agents against structural insect pests. A group of scientists from University of Maryland-College Park and USDA, led by Kevin Ulrich, recently evaluated the use of fungal spores, Metarhizium anisopliae, against the bed bugs, Cimex lectularius, in the lab. The entomopathogenic spores, which have been effective against other true bugs, were introduced to the pyrethroid-susceptible bed bugs in a variety of ways, including feeding, contact, and by aerosol spray. Unless humidity levels were exceptionally high (98%), the only delivery method that effectively caused mortality was ingestion, when spores were mixed with a blood product and fed to bed bugs. Ambient humidities in structures are typically much lower than that so the authors of the study concluded that M. anisopliae is not an effective control strategy, at least not in the ways tested in these experiments. However, previous studies have shown another fungus (Beauveria bassiana) to be effective against bed bugs.

This research was published in the most recent volume of the Journal of Economic Entomology under the title, "Exposure of Bed Bugs to Metarhizium anisopliae at Different Humidities".