The Bedbug Scourge

By Stephen M. Schleicher, MD

Bedbugs are upon us! A headline in the August 15, 2010 Philadelphia Inquirer reads: The most difficult, challenging pest problem of our generation: Across America, bedbugs are biting. This was followed a mere four days later by an article in USA Today entitled: More offices see bedbug infestations. Yikes.

Bedbugs are indeed on the rise, sparing no socioeconomic group. Several reasons for this are hypothesized including increased travel (hitchhiking in luggage), immigration, increased exchange of second-hand furniture, and resistance to common insecticides. NBC Nightly News reported that in some parts of the country complaints involving bedbugs are up 500%.  New York City has recently allocated $500,000 in an attempt to rid the city of these critters. Good luck. Bedbugs have been identified not only in luxury hotels and condominiums but in movie theaters as well. And in Philadelphia bedbugs have been found in the offices of the Internal Revenue Service.

Identifying bedbugs is not an easy task.  The insects are small and flat, less than one-quarter of an inch in diameter. One’s best chance of finding them is to wake up in the middle of the night and shine a flashlight on the bed sheets. Infestation can also be recognized by the presence of red-brown specks (bedbug excrement) on sheets and mattress seams. The bugs can also live in cracks and crevices and under baseboards.  Specially trained bedbug-sniffing dogs are in high demand, and pricey; business and homeowners are shelling out up to $1,000 for their services.

The initial bedbug bite goes unnoticed and intense itching develops later, the result of an allergic reaction. Often the bites are arranged in groups of three, appetizingly referred to as breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Bedbugs avoid light and roam at night, drawn to a human host by body heat. They dine (suck blood) for five to ten minutes during which time their body weight swells some 200 percent, and their length increases by 50 percent.