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.
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