10/22/2011 Todays Bedbugs Are Stronger Than Years Past: Resistance Has Grown To Pesticides Since 1950′s

US researchers have uncovered the genetic mechanism that bed bugs use to resist powerful insecticides, according to a study, leading to the hope of more effective ways to combat the pests.

Bed bugs, which have been largely absent from the United States since the 1950s, have returned in force in the last decade in the US, and notably other Western countries in Europe.

They have, in this time, developed unique resistance to the insecticides that are mainly used against them — deltamethrin and beta-cyfluthrin, both leading pyrethroids.

The genetic research released Wednesday in the journal PLoS One, published by the Public Library, offers new hope to understand their resistance and find new ways to eradicate the blood-sucking bugs.

“Different bed bug populations within the US and throughout the world may differ in their levels of resistance and resistance strategies, so there is the need for continuous surveillance,” said lead author Zach Adelman, associate professor of entomology at Virginia Tech.

Adelman and the other researchers in the study assessed two populations of bed bugs — “a robust, resistant population” found in 2008, and a “non-resistant population” that has been raised in a lab since 1973.

The study determined how each strain succumbed to the pyrethroids, if at all, and determined that over a 24 hour period it required “5,200 times more deltamethrin or 111 times more beta-cyfulthrin” to kill the modern bed bugs compared to the older specimens.

The bed bug’s bite is a little painful rather than dangerous, but many people are scared because the creature mainly attacks when people are asleep.

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10/10/2011 Flagstaff Arizona Crawling With Bedbugs: Rise In Northern Part Of State Do To Heavy Tourism

Erin Kilbane and a friend awoke last Friday at a Flagstaff hotel to find themselves covered with small bugs.

“We both woke up in the middle of the night completely covered in bites, swollen, feeling sick, and we found bed bugs crawling on the bed,” she said.

The two later disposed of all of their clothing, and the motel needed an exterminator who would likely tell the business the mattresses had to go too.

Unfortunately, Kilbane and the hotel have plenty of company: Like Europe and other parts of the United States, northern Arizona is crawling with bed bugs.

Reports of the bugs in this region are up about 12-fold compared to past years, probably due in large part to tourism.

They’re found in Flagstaff, Page, Winslow, Tuba City, Window Rock at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, and beyond, and have been the cause of hotel room closures and lots of work for exterminators.

“We are finding them in all types of public accommodations — in motels, hotels, from the most expensive to the least expensive. They don’t discriminate,” said Marlene Gaither, an environmental health manager with Coconino County’s health department.

And they’re in apartment complexes, private homes, and anywhere a traveling friend or relative might spend or borrow a night on a couch or bed.

“It can be anywhere,” said Judy Shelton, owner of Conn Pest Control.

The bugs are reddish-brown or pink, 1/4 to 3/8 of an inch in length and tick-like in shape.

As nocturnal parasites, bed bugs hide in dressers, headboards, mattresses, and near a bed or couch until they can bite and draw blood from sleeping victims at night, often biting several times in sequence.

They can be transported in luggage or clothing, and it’s recommended that mattresses in infested houses be broadly cut open before disposal to prevent anyone else from re-using the mattress.

Testing for an outbreak can involve a visual inspection, or setting a chunk of dry ice in a pie tin and surrounding it with sticky paper. The bed bugs are drawn to the carbon dioxide emitted as the ice vaporizes, and they get stuck on the paper as they approach.

Coconino County’s public health agency used to receive five reports of bed bugs in Coconino County per year.

Now it’s more like five reports per month.

“We’ve gotten so good — I hate to say this — at finding bed bugs,” Gaither said.

Surprisingly enough, some people live with the blood-dependent bugs, but don’t find themselves being bitten.

That was the case for one woman who came to visit her sister and inadvertently brought the bugs with her.

And it was also true for a northern Arizona couple who photographed the bugs at their home and lived with them for months, but reported no bites.

“He took a picture of his mattress, and there wasn’t a square inch that didn’t have a bed bug,” Gaither remembered.

Calling an exterminator at the first sign of the bugs is highly recommended before the parasites can multiply and spread.

Eradicating them involves the repeated application of pesticide, in several different forms. The chemicals can be harmful to people if used incorrectly.

“It’s a pretty involved process. There’s no quick fix here,” Shelton said.

Repeat treatment is required because the pesticide cannot kill the eggs, or anything it cannot contact directly (such as the inside of a mattress.)

Conn Pest Control workers wear scrubs and sanitary equipment over their clothes and shoes to avoid taking the bugs home. Some inn employees are becoming trained in how to clean a vacuum to avoid transporting the bugs between rooms.

If Coconino County has anything in its favor amid this outbreak, two factors count:

The bugs aren’t known to spread any blood-borne pathogens or other diseases, outside of some skin irritation related to bites, Gaither said.

And unlike some other locations, the bugs here are defeated by a less-toxic cocktail of pesticides and have not yet developed resistance.

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11/15/10 Why Are Bedbugs On The Way Back?

THAT’S THE WHY: “Night night, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite” – it’s a rhyme to entertain kids as you tuck them in, but in recent years the joke is wearing thin, because the insects are apparently experiencing a revival.

It’s not as if bedbugs are anything new – they are mentioned in writings of ancient Greece – but the use of pesticides in the 1950s meant that for a while in certain parts of the world at least, humans could sleep at night with less likelihood of Cimex lectularius burrowing into their skin for a feed of blood.

But in recent years the critters – which don’t generally carry disease but leave itchy welts on the skin – have been on the rise.

The 2010 Comprehensive Global Bed Bug Study , carried out by the US National Pest Management Association and the University of Kentucky, found that 95 per cent of pest control companies in the US had dealt with a bedbug infestation in the last year, up from 25 per cent in 2000.

Pest companies report themselves hopping after bedbugs in other parts of the world too, including Europe, the Middle East/Africa and South America.

So why are these insects staging a bigger comeback than Take That? “Experts are not certain of the cause for the bedbug resurgence,” wrote John Manuel in Environmental Health Perspectives last month.

“The increased movement of people domestically and internationally is thought to be one factor. Another is the resistance bedbugs have developed to pesticides.”

The study also suggested a lack of societal awareness and people not taking precautions – such as inspecting the bed for bugs – as contributing factors.

Don’t know about you, but I’m starting to itch just thinking about it.

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