One seemingly unanswered question about bed bugs is whether or not they can carry disease. In most cases, public health departments consider this as impossible, hence their usual classification as a public nuisance rather than a public health danger.
The question though, as far as health departments are concerned, appears to be split into two definite parts. First, do bedbugs carry disease? Second, can they transmit disease? It seems like a very fine line but there is a distinct difference between the two questions.
DISEASE
Science is very strict about it's use of certain terms and "transmits disease" is certainly one of those terms. BB's do "carry disease" in that it is generally accepted that they will retain disease picked up from their host's blood in their bodies. Yet to date, no study has proven that those diseases get back out of the BB and into a new victim when the bug feeds again.
This conclusion seems to indicate that, unlike mosquitoes or ticks, BBs do not then transmit any of the organisms that can cause disease in humans. The concern of transmission seems to involve more the fluid in the BB than the bug itself.
So the question then becomes, if a bed bug is crushed, deliberately or by accident, does the BB fluid carry the possibility of carrying disease? There was one study where infected BB fluid was injected into some rabbits. The rabbits then caught the disease.
But that only happened because there was a man in a white coat and a syringe. Can it happen in a normal living environment? That seems to be the real question.
The bottom line appears to be that while in normal situations BB's will not transmit disease they can carry it and if for no reason other than that if you have a bedbug infestation they should be exterminated as quickly as possible.
Can BedBugs Carry Disease? DISEASE
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