Chagas disease now established in US

[Astronuc]

Chagas disease, long considered only a threat abroad, is established in California and the Southern U.S.
According to articles in the Los Angeles Times, "Chagas disease, long considered only a threat abroad, is established in California and the Southern U.S.", and "Kissing bugs bring deadly disease to California". LA Times requires a subscription.

Related article - https://www.swoknews.com/ap/nationa...cle_cb8c396f-1488-5320-bb6c-f3fa89571ce1.html

Chagas disease is caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, which lives in a bloodsucking insect called the kissing bug. There are roughly a dozen species of kissing bugs in the U.S. and four in California known to carry the parasite. Research has shown that in some places, such as Los Angeles' Griffith Park, about a third of all kissing bugs harbor the Chagas parasite.

It's why a team of epidemiologists, researchers and medical doctors are calling on the World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to label the disease as endemic, meaning consistently present, in the U.S. They hope that will bring awareness, education, dialogue and potentially public health investment to a disease that has long carried a stigma, falsely associated with poor, rural migrants from bug-infected homes in far-off tropical nations.

"This is a disease that has been neglected and has been impacting Latin Americans for many decades," said Norman Beatty, a medical epidemiologist at the University of Florida and an expert on Chagas. "But it's also here in the United States."

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/100-000-californians-could-potentially-141242198.html

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/31/9/24-1700_article


jim macnamara has a relevant post about 8 years ago.

Medical Post in thread 'Chagas Disease: A Hidden Threat to Latin Americans?'

Apr 19, 2017

Please see the Prevention section of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chagas_disease

Without going into lots of details:
1. 72% reduction of new infections in the 'Southern cone' geographic area of infection as a result of education, blood screening, and testing for new cases.
Newly infections are readily treatable.

2. Chagas is very well known among physicians, it is a topic in Human Pathology in most medical schools.
If you traveled to Guyana, and came back to Britain with the early mild Chagas symptoms, and unless you told a physician you just traveled there, s/he would not see...

• jim mcnamara

• 

 

[Astronuc]

‘Kissing bug’ disease is here to stay in the US, experts say. Here’s why it’s spreading
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/kissing-bug-disease-stay-us-100005828.html

Chagas disease, a potentially deadly condition caused by a parasite carried by insects called kissing bugs, should now be considered endemic in the United States, experts say – and without recognition that it’s a constant presence in some parts of the country, more people will suffer unnecessarily.

A report on the topic was published last week in the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, and the authors say they hope that growing global attention on the new paper means Chagas could finally get the surveillance, prevention and testing efforts and research funding it deserves in the United States.

“We’ve been waiting forever; all of us Chagas people have been waiting for people to recognize this disease is in our communities,” said Dr. Norman Beatty, coauthor of the report and a clinical associate professor at the University of Florida College of Medicine’s Division of Infectious Diseases & Global Medicine who has studied Chagas for the past decade.

The World Health Organization considers Chagas a neglected tropical disease, and the Pan American Health Organization says it is endemic – with a constant presence or usual prevalence – in 21 other countries in the Americas, not including the United States. Chagas is one of the leading causes of heart disease in Latin America, and it causes more disability than other insect-borne infections, even more than malaria and Zika, studies show.

Chagas largely spreads when triatomine bugs, commonly known as kissing bugs, bite a human while they’re sleeping. The bug defecates in that bite or on a person’s face, and the person unwittingly wipes the feces into their eyes, nose or mouth. The feces can carry a parasite, Trypanosoma cruzi, that causes the disease.

Worse than bed bugs.

According to the CDC, about 20% to 30% of people who’ve been infected develop more serious problems like long-term digestive and nervous system conditions, heart failure, stroke or death.

Yikes!