Plagues,
Pestilences and Diseases
Bedbugs infected with deadly 'superbug' germs found in
Canada
By Mike Stobbe, AP Medical Writer
Canadian scientists detected drug-resistant MRSA bacteria in
bedbugs from three hospital patients from a downtrodden Vancouver
neighborhood.
Bedbugs have not been known to spread disease, and there's no
clear evidence that the five bedbugs found on the patients or
their belongings had spread MRSA or a second less dangerous
drug-resistant germ.
However, bedbugs can cause itching that can lead to excessive
scratching. That can cause breaks in the skin that make people
more susceptible to these bacteria, noted Dr. Marc Romney, one of
the study's authors.
The study is small and very preliminary, "But it's an intriguing
finding" that needs to be further researched, said Romney, medical
microbiologist at St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver.
The hospital is the closest one to the poor Downtown Eastside
neighborhood near the city's waterfront. Romney said he and his
colleagues did the research after seeing a simultaneous boom in
bedbugs and MRSA cases from the neighborhood.
Five bedbugs were crushed and analyzed. MRSA, or
methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, was found on three
bugs. MRSA is resistant to several types of common antibiotics and
can become deadly if it gets through the skin and into the
bloodstream.
Two bugs had VRE, or vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus Faecium, a
less dangerous form of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
Both germs are often seen in hospitals, and experts have been far
more worried about nurses and other health-care workers spreading
the bacteria than insects.
It's not clear if the bacteria originated with the bedbugs or if
the bugs picked it up from already infected people, Romney added.
The study was released Wednesday by Emerging Infectious Diseases,
a publication of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention.