Bed bugs are insects from the genus Cimex that feed on blood, usually at night. Their bites can result in a number of health impacts including skin rashes, psychological effects, and allergic symptoms. Bed bug bites may lead to skin changes ranging from small areas of redness to prominent blisters. Symptoms may take between minutes to days to appear and itchiness is generally present. Some individuals may feel tired or have a fever. Typically, uncovered areas of the body are affected. Their bites are not known to transmit any infectious disease. Bed bugs have five immature nymph life stages and a final mature adult stage. Bed bugs need at least one blood meal in order to advance to the next stage of development. Bed bugs are attracted to their hosts primarily by carbon dioxide, secondarily by warmth.
How Do They Spread?
Transfer to new places is usually in the personal items of the human they feed upon. Dwellings can become infested with bed bugs in a variety of ways, such as:
-Bugs and eggs inadvertently brought in from other infested dwellings on a visiting person’s clothing or luggage
–Infested items (such as furniture especially beds or couches, clothing, or backpacks) brought into a home or business
–Proximity of infested dwellings or items, if easy routes are available for travel, e.g. through ducts or false ceilings
-People visiting an infested area and carrying the bugs to another area on their clothing, luggage, or bodies.
Though bed bugs will opportunistically feed on pets, they do not live or travel on the skin of their hosts, and pets are not believed to be a factor in their spread.
Detection
Bed bugs can exist singly but tend to congregate once established. Although strictly parasitic, they spend only a tiny fraction of their lives physically attached to hosts. Once a bed bug feeds, it follows a chemical trail to return to a nearby harborage, commonly in or near beds or couches, where they live in clusters of adults, juveniles, and eggs.
Prevention
To prevent bringing home bed bugs, travelers are advised to take precautions after visiting an infested site: generally, these include checking shoes on leaving the site, changing clothes outside the house before entering, and putting the used clothes in a clothes dryer outside the house. When visiting a new lodging, it is advised to check the bed before taking suitcases into the sleeping area, and putting the suitcase on a raised stand to make bedbugs less likely to crawl in. An extreme measure would be putting the suitcase in the tub. Clothes should be hung up or left in the suitcase, and never left on the floor. Additional preventative measures for exposed travelers to decontaminate clothes and luggage upon returning home by heat treatment, washer and dryer on HOT setting does wonders.