There's one kiss you didn't want to get on Valentine's Day.
A University of Arizona study found that 40 percent of 164 kissing bugs collected in Tucson carried a parasite known to cause a potentially deadly disease that infects millions of people in Latin America.
There have been no cases of Chagas' disease reported in Arizona, and only six reported cases contracted from kissing bugs in the United States.
It's unclear if the specific strain of the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi found in Tucson's bugs causes the disease. It also isn't certain that the local species of kissing bug, Triatoma rubida, has the ability to transmit the parasite to humans, said Carolina Reisenman, a main researcher for the study.
"It's important to be on top of this to raise awareness, but this study is by no means saying that the population here is at risk of Chagas' disease," she said.
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Chagas' is most commonly spread by certain varieties of kissing bugs and kills 13,000 to 21,000 people in Latin America each year, according to the World Health Organization.
Kissing bugs are blood feeders that contract parasites by feeding on mammals that are infected. Certain species of the bug have the ability to spread disease-causing parasites to humans through fecal material.
This occurs most commonly if the particular species of kissing bug defecates near the body area where it feeds. The host can then contract the disease if the infected fecal matter enters the wound or a mucous membrane, Reisenman said.
Initial symptoms of Chagas' are often mild and flu-like. Serious symptoms generally don't show up until years or even decades later and often manifest as cardiomyopathy, any of various diseases of the heart.
Because cardiomyopathy can be caused in a variety of ways, it can be hard to pinpoint Chagas' disease as the cause unless the doctor is familiar with the disorder.
Kissing-bug bites also can provoke extreme allergic reactions in some people. In 2006, the Arizona Biomedical Research Commission awarded the UA department of neuroscience a $100,000 grant to study ways to prevent kissing bugs from coming in contact with Tucsonans.
In the course of this study, the researchers found more than they bargained for, principal investigator John Hildebrand said.
"We decided we should look at them carefully and see if there might be a parasite in the kissing bugs around Tucson, and that's where we got this surprising finding that there's a lot of them," Hildebrand said.
The 40 percent figure is a drastic increase from studies conducted in the 1960s that showed 7 percent to 10 percent of collected kissing bugs had the parasite.
The higher percentage doesn't necessarily mean that infection will spread, but it is something to pay attention to, said Ellen Dotson, a research entomologist with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"The likelihood of getting infection may be minuscule, but it is higher than what we thought previously," she said.
The UA researchers are now seeking funding to determine if the local strain of the parasite can, in fact, cause Chagas' disease and whether the local variety of kissing bug is capable of transmitting it to humans, Reisenman said.
"We have an insect that can potentially transmit a disease," she said. "If the insect did not have the parasite, we could say, 'OK, there's no way; they don't carry the parasite here, end of the story.' But they do carry the parasite, so this is not the end of the story."
Contact NASA Space Grant intern Otto Ross at 573-4125 or oross@azstarnet.com
