In the Future, It May Not Be Necessary To Kill Bed Bugs

Do you remember you mother tucking you into bed and turning off the light while saying, "Sleep tight, and don't let the bed bugs bite"? If you grew up in the 1980's or 1990's or early 2000's, you probably thought she was kidding. But if you grew up in the 1950's or 1960's or earlier, she probably wasn't kidding. All over the world, for thousands of years, blood sucking bed bugs were a perennial health problem until pesticides were invented the early 1940's to kill them. Most of the world was bed bug-free for several generations, but as of 2012, bed bugs have developed resistance to all the bed bug sprays that are safe to use around people.

In Case You've Never Encountered a Bed Bug

Before 1940, just about everyone was all too familiar with bed bugs. Nowadays, some people still have not run into them. Bed bugs get their name by their attraction to warm, soft, protective beds. Although they are a blood sucking parasite, primarily a city parasite (bed bugs congregate where there are lots of people), they don't spend much time attached to their human hosts. Bed bugs sense carbon dioxide as it is exhaled by sleeping humans, climb up bed overs,and  use heat sensors on their antennae to locate the "juiciest" sites on the human's body. They secrete an anesthetic so you don't feel them and an anticoagulant to make your blood flow freely so they can spend about five to ten minutes filling themselves with human blood. The bed bug then retreats to some safe corner and molts, not feeding again until it's at the next stage in its life cycle. If nobody does anything about them, thousands of bed bugs can infest a single room, waiting to hitchhike on furniture or luggage to other locations. A single human being can be bitten as many as 500 times in a single night.

Most people have no sensation of the bed bug while it is biting, but many have an allergic reaction to the bite after the bug has had an opportunity to escape. Bed bug bites:

• Occur at night. The peak time for bed bug attacks is about an hour before dawn.
• Leave an undetectable mark unless there is an allergic reaction. . Bed bug bites can cause a flat whelp or a raise red bump, and take two days to two weeks to resolve. 
• Sometimes cause system allergic reactions or even anaphylaxis. The more times you have been bitten, the more serious the allergic reaction will be.
• Can cause anemia in people who are severely bitten. The most common victims of multiple bed bug bites are babies and adults who paralyzed or immobile.
• Induce anxiety or insomnia in people who wake up to blood on their pillowcases or patterns of vampire-like markings.

READ 10 Reasons You Should Go To Bed Before Midnight

Why Don't Bed Bug Sprays Work Any More?

Bed bugs have developed pesticide resistance through some of the same mechanisms that bacteria have developed antibiotic-resistance. Through random genetic mutations, there have been a few bed bugs that were naturally resistant to malathion, pyrethroids, and dichlorvos. There is a pesticide called carbamate that still kills them, but it is not safe for use around children. Those few bed bugs that survived the pesticides managed to escape, and spread themselves around with human activity. A peculiarity of bed bug genetics is that breeding with bed bugs from another building results in offspring that feed more, so not only did the succeeding generations of bed bugs have a natural ability to survive pesticides, they were even more voracious blood suckers.

Genetic Engineering of a Bed Bug That Doesn't Bite

Just because pesticides don't work doesn't mean that there is absolutely nothing that can be done about them. Laundering clothes and bed linens and then drying them at a temperature of at least 50 °C (122 °F) for at least two minutes will kill them. It's possible to heat an entire building to 45 °C (113 °F) for just two hours and kill all the bugs, although this will also damage furniture and electronics. Keeping bedspreads off the floor and keeping luggage on a stand also helps, but the simple truth is, it's really hard to get rid of bed bugs without poisoning them. In a recently published study, scientists reported that it really is possible to kill bed bugs with bed bug sprays, but it takes 30,000 times more insecticide to kill recently collected bed bugs that it takes to kill bed bugs that have been bred in the lab (and haven't had a chance to mate with resistant bed bugs) for 30 years.

To find a way to prevent a new world-wide epidemic of bed bugs, scientists recently succeeded in using genome sequencing to create a first time ever map of bed bug genetics. To their surprise, the scientists learned that:

• Bed bugs have changed very little over the last sixty million years except in their choice of hosts. Ancient bed bugs fed on prehistoric bats.
• Bed bugs don't just transmit their genes through sex. They can also "borrow" genes from bacteria and use bacteria to pass genes to other bed bugs. This means that it's even easier for bed bugs to become pesticide-resistant. They don't even have to wait to hatch baby bed bugs. Bacteria in bed bug poop can carry the pesticide resistance genes from one bed bug to another (which is another reason to clean or discard mattresses or upholstery that contain the tiny black dots of bed bug feces or the faint, sickening odor of crushed bed bugs).
• Bed bugs have a very limited number of genes related to their ability to see, taste, and smell. They sense what is necessary to find a human being to feed on and to find a mate, but that's about it.
• Many of the genes in a bed bug's body are activated only after the bed bug feeds on a human host. Bed bugs need us for their development and not just for food.

READ Do You Know Who You're Sleeping With? Protect Yourself From Bed Bugs

• Bed bugs develop new genes that help them survive when they live with bats. Bed bugs coming from bat caves are especially hard to get out of human habitations.

Examination of the bed bug genome hasn't given scientists anything to keep bed bugs from evolving into our (to borrow a term from Washington Post writer Rachel Feltman) "mattress-dwelling overlords." Bed bugs will continue to cause people to cringe and shudder for a few years yet. But the more scientists study the bed bug genome, the more likely they are to find a gene that can be activated to create a bed bug that doesn't bite.