{"id":10314,"date":"2025-09-17T11:09:36","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T16:09:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=10314"},"modified":"2025-09-17T11:09:39","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T16:09:39","slug":"what-to-know-about-the-kissing-bug-disease","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2025\/09\/17\/what-to-know-about-the-kissing-bug-disease\/","title":{"rendered":"What to Know About the \u2018Kissing Bug\u2019 Disease"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/09\/15\/well\/kissing-bug-chagas-disease.html\">NYT<\/a> Though some researchers believe it should be labeled endemic in the United States, most Americans don\u2019t need to worry about getting sick. Perhaps you\u2019ve seen the \u201ckissing bug\u201d disease all over the internet in the past few weeks \u2014 and the images of the culprit, a dark, penny-sized insect with orange and red markings along its sides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Formally called Chagas disease, kissing bug disease is endemic in 21 countries across Latin America. Though it\u2019s nothing new (kissing bugs have been around&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/articles\/PMC357047\/\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"for thousands of years, opens in a new window\">for thousands of years<\/a>), the disease is sparking interest and concern stateside: In a&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/wwwnc.cdc.gov\/eid\/article\/31\/9\/24-1700_article\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"paper, opens in a new window\">paper<\/a>&nbsp;published this month in the Emerging Infectious Diseases journal, public health experts argued that Chagas disease should be considered endemic in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The researchers pointed to the widespread presence of kissing bugs and infected animals in the country, as well as the steady stream of local human cases in Texas between 2013 and 2023. Cases aren\u2019t necessarily increasing, but the researchers argued that an ongoing local presence of Chagas warranted the disease being categorized as endemic, which can help increase its awareness.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NYT Though some researchers believe it should be labeled endemic in the United States, most Americans don\u2019t need to worry about getting sick. Perhaps you\u2019ve seen the \u201ckissing bug\u201d disease all over the internet in the past few weeks \u2014 and the images of the culprit, a dark, penny-sized insect with orange and red markings [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-emerging-infectious-diseases"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10314"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10315,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10314\/revisions\/10315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}