Ricardo Saldana lives in Wheatland and isn’t the least bit surprised by reports that the deadly kissing bug has been spreading in America and has made it as far north as Wyoming.
That’s because Saldana believes he saw several of the bugs inside his own home, which he promptly squashed and got rid of.
“I grew up with these bugs in Mexico,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “So, I know exactly what they look like, and what they can do.”
Kissing bugs can carry a parasite that causes a deadly disease called Chagas, which leads to irreparable heart or digestive problems if the disease is not caught and treated early enough.
The bugs typically bite people on the face, often near the lips, hence their name.
There’s a reason for that particular bite location, according to University of Wyoming Extension Entomology Specialist Scott Schell.
For one, a person’s face is typically readily exposed while someone is sleeping. But, more importantly, the lips do have a rich network of blood vessels at a location where the skin is very thin, making it an ideal lunch spot for a kissing bug.
The bite itself, however, is not what transfers the disease Chagas to a person. It’s a different, much more disturbing habit. The bugs will take a dump right on a person’s face while they are “kissing” their victims.
“They don’t want the watery part of the blood they’re feeding on,” Schell explained. “They’re feeding to get the cellular part.”
So, they will excrete all the stuff they don’t want so they can keep right on sucking blood from their victims. This disgusting little habit puts their feces very near the bite’s location. If the bite happens to itch — and what insect bites don’t itch? — a person is likely to scratch it and rub feces from the infected insect right into the bite wound.
That’s how the disease Chagas migrates into a human host, where it quietly replicates for years, wreaking havoc on heart and colon tissues, until a person becomes very ill, and potentially dies.
“This is a more complex transmission route than a mosquito with West Nile virus,” Schell said. “Our risk (for Chagas) in Wyoming is much lower than say Texas or Oklahoma. Texas has multiple species of Triatoma, and it now appears that Chagas is endemic in populations down there in dogs and possibly humans.”
Why Chagas Is Dangerous
According to the Centers for Disease Control, Chagas has two stages.
In the first, acute stage, symptoms may include fever, feeling tired, body aches, headache, rash, loss of appetite, diarrhea, vomiting, and swelling near the bite mark.
The disease is highly treatable during this stage, but the symptoms are similar to other illnesses like the flu, making it difficult to diagnose.
The second stage of the disease is the problematic stage, and the one that is hard to treat. The parasite can persist in a person’s body for years, leading to irreparable damage to the heart or the digestive system.
People often experience few symptoms during the second stage to warn them there is a problem.
Left to grow and multiply, the parasite can cause things like an enlarged heart or digestive problems like an enlarged esophagus or colon, leading to problems with eating or going to the bathroom.
The disease does not spread person to person like the cold or the flu. It doesn’t spread through casual contact with either infected people or animals.
It is only spread through the feces of the insect, or blood or other bodily fluids from an infected mammal. It can also spread from eating fruit or foods that have been infected by kissing bugs.
Animals that are particularly susceptible to Chagas from kissing bugs include dogs, raccoons, opossums, armadillos, coyotes, rodents, and other wild animals.
Typically, cattle are not particularly affected by Chagas from kissing bugs, according to Wyoming State Veterinarian Hallie Hasel, who said the parasite is so far mostly a southern U.S. concern.
The Packrat Connection
In Wyoming, the kissing bug species was first recorded here in 2020 by University of Wyoming researchers, Will K. Reeves and Myrna Miller. They reported finding Triatoma sanguisuga in the area of Camp Guernsey. At the time, that was the northernmost reported instance of that particular species, making it a record.
The specimen was found in a museum in Gillette, dated 2000, but mislabeled as a different species, Triatoma protracta.
T. sanguisuga is a known vector for the Chagas parasite and the “presence of this insect in Wyoming indicates that wildlife, domestic animals such as dogs, and humans could be exposed to that parasite in Wyoming,” Reeves and Miller wrote in the paper.
The paper also suggested that T. protracta, which has demonstrated the ability to survive subzero temperatures and is present in Colorado, is likely also in Wyoming and has just not yet been identified.
“The overall environment near Camp Guernsey is similar to that across the western half of the midwestern United States,” Miller and Reeves wrote in the paper. “With prairie grasslands and livestock ranches … and the presence of this insect in Wyoming indicates that wildlife, domestic animals such as dogs, and humans could be exposed to the parasite in Wyoming.”
Schell could not confirm whether the bugs Saldana killed in his home in Wheatland are indeed kissing bugs, not having seen them himself, but said there are several lookalikes that are readily mistaken for kissing bugs, particularly assassin bugs.
Typically, Wyoming’s Triatoma species are associated with packrats, Schell said, and that puts them on a different biological clock than the species that would typically infect a human.
That’s because packrats tend to sleep during the day. That’s when the kissing bugs that feed on them would be most active as well, since they feed on their victims while they sleep.
“So, unlike southern areas of the country, which can have more abundant Triatoma species that can potentially transmit Chagas, our risk is much lower in Wyoming,” Schell said.
Don’t Rub Your Eyes
Wyoming Department of Health has not yet seen any instances of Chagas in Wyoming, according to Wyoming Department of Health Epidemiologist Courtney Tillman.
“Kissing bugs are very rare here in Wyoming,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “They found one in the past 25 years and I’m not aware of any other detections. But if people do see kissing bugs, the way they transmit Chagas disease is through their feces. So, hand hygiene goes a long way, because in a lot of cases, how they get into the body is (people) have feces on their hands and they rub their eyes or they put their hands in their mouth.”
Rubbing the eyes causes the eyelids to swell after infection and is a common diagnostic feature of the illness, Tillman added.
“If you’re seeing kissing bugs, if you’re handling them, make sure to wash your hands and wash anywhere that you saw them on your body,” she said.
Chagas is not yet a reportable condition in Wyoming, Tillman said, nor have any instances been reported to Wyoming Department of Health.
“It’s certainly a lot more common in the southern United States, especially Texas and Arizona,” she said. “The big thing is just emphasizing that there’s no indication that these kissing bugs have formed habitats in Wyoming, and it was just sort of one documented bug that’s been found in the literature, so really, it’s still just very rare here and not something we would expect to cause a lot of problems here in Wyoming.”
Where To Report Kissing Bugs
For those who do think they’ve found kissing bugs, the insects can be reported to Schell at sschell@uwyo.edu for positive identification through the University of Wyoming Extension’s office’s insect ID program.
While so far not seen as particularly common in Wyoming, the Centers for Disease Control, did recently highlight a paper on Chagas that suggests kissing bugs and the disease they carry should be identified as endemic in the United States.
Not identifying it as such has contributed to lack of awareness about the disease and worse health outcomes, according to the paper, which was written by researchers in Florida.
An estimated 280,000 people in the United States already have Chagas and do not realize it, according to the CDC’s website about the disease, and are at risk of developing more severe complications as the disease progresses.
Chagas is highly treatable if caught early. Awareness is key to better health outcomes for those who have been exposed or are at risk of being exposed to the disease.
Chagas has been reported in eight states so far, including Texas, California, Arizona, Tennessee, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, and Arkansas.
Kissing bugs have been confirmed in at least 32 states so far, including Wyoming.
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
