Researchers out of Texas want to raise awareness about a type of disease, commonly spread through a parasitic infection inside kissing bugs, known as Chagas. Now experts say the data shows the disease should be considered endemic to the United States, meaning it's present in a consistent manner.
As Texas Public Radio reports, Bonny Mayes is a state health department epidemiologist. She says there's a misconception that Chagas transmission is only linked to travel and migration. “That's not really the case with Chagas disease. Like I said, it's been here for a very long time.”
Mayes says the risk is low in the U-S. which researchers credit to improved housing conditions. But they caution that doctors and veterinarians need to be more aware of Chagas to ensure people and animals get properly diagnosed.
The U.S. does not have standardized surveillance of Chagas, which experts say can present challenges in attempting to study the virus. But, according to epidemiologist Sarah Hamer at Texas A&M’s College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, the state of Texas is one of the eight states which does track Chagas cases, and whether transmission happened locally. Chagas has been a notifiable disease since 2013 in Texas.
Transmission of Chagas Disease is typically achieved through the bite of a blood-sucking kissing bug, with its feces entering the person’s bloodstream, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). While dogs, for example, are sometimes exposed to the viral infection when they eat a kissing bug infected with the parasite, and its resulting feces.
The CDC estimates 8 million people worldwide and 280,000 in the United States have this disease at any given time, often without knowing it.
