Since identifying these early in the summer, I found two in my house, one last night!  Chagas bugs are nightmarish.  I had no idea they were as common as they are!  People should be told about these kind of things.

 I first thought these were either stinkbugs or assassin bugs (which are all related) and found throughout the South West and especially Texas, but these are just evil.  

The parasitic disease they carry, caused by the protozoan Tripanosoma cruzi, can often have little to no symptoms in the acute phase, long term chronic infection is very serious, I'll let you look it up if your interested. Chagas disease is not just a "third world" problem.

To me these should be talked about more often, I think they are much, much more insidious and dangerous than any snake or spider which you hear about all the time.  

At least those don't wait 10 years before horrible life threatening symptoms appear, and no one know why, unless they test specifically for the protozoan.  If you see these catch and send to TAMU (or your state university), or just kill them.

Good to know thanks Don.

Scary stuff for sure...  here's a recent article from the Dallas Morning News..

http://interactives.dallasnews.com/2015/tropical-diseases/

Thanks for posting that article.  I am glad that this information is being distributed.  I have been living in or around Texas my whole life and I have never heard about these insects being in Texas until this summer.

I try to look up anything I don't know what it is (especially when I find it in the house) I don't like to kill things that are harmless.  So I am still pretty freaked out about these.  I have livestock, and lots of pets, just knowing they are prevalent in my area gives me the creeps.

 

I may have seen these bugs before and thought that they were cute little buggers but cannot recall where. And I thought that  fire ants were bad enough.
This is valuable info. Thanks Don.

Thanks for posting this and thanks for the link. Very good information, who knew?

hmmm...
i was sick over the winter
not a cold or the flu, it was swollen lymph nodes, and some strange skin problems.
(i havent gotten a cold since i went vegan 25 years ago)
i had blood work done 3 times, all looked good.
makes you wonder...

i read it makes men more aggressive.
this makes me wonder about mass shootings etc...
im sure there are many people with legit psychological problems
but adding an extra dose of aggressive behavior is never good.

guess ya never know.

How big are the bugs that you don`t notice when one of them land on you?

This is a very interesting topic to me, since I'm a grad student and had a side research project for a while to work on repurposing approved drugs for treating Chagas disease.

Chagas disease has two stages, acute and chronic. The disease vector is that bug, also known as the kissing bug. It bites you, usually while you're sleeping, and deposits feces at the same time which carry the parasite. If you wake up, scratch, or get it in your eye, the parasite is introduced. The problem is, the first acute stage is often asymptomatic, though you can have a swelling at the site of infection (sometimes at the eye, which is called a chagoma or Romana's sign). It's mainly in the blood stream during the acute stage and can be treated with one of two fairly toxic treatments, nifurtimox or benznidazole. Sometimes decades later, many develop into the chronic stage of the disease, and the parasite likes to reside in heart muscle, causing congestive heart failure among other things. This is the dangerous stage, which unfortunately can't be effectively treated. 

There have been reports of the insect vector making its way into Texas, at least one infection that I know of. It's not normally screened against in blood, so some people catch it with blood transfusions from infected donors. So in short, if you see the insect, kill it! And try to get it tested. If you should get bitten by one, it'd probably be good to get it looked at immediately since the infection most easily treated in the acute stage.

Keep an eye out in Missouri and Arkansas as well, I just saw this story today. Apparently some have been found even this far north.

http://m.kspr.com/CDC-reports-kissing-bug-in-Arkansas-Missouri/21053016_36633002