Ist Berlin damit jetzt eine Großstadt wie New York? Da gibt's ja ähnliche Probleme:
http://nymag.com/news/features/65733/Als Quelle bei Shortnews wird die BZ angegeben, das ist so was wie die Bild, nur noch schlimmer.
Schade nur für die Springerpresse, daß es bislang keine Beweise gibt, daß Bettwanzen (Cimex lectularius) als Vektoren agieren.
Bed Bugs as Vectors of Human Disease
Transmission of more than 40 human diseases has been attributed to bed bugs, but there is little evidence that such transmission has ever occurred. Older scientific literature postulated that bed bugs may be vectors of plague, yellow fever, tuberculosis, relapsing fever, leprosy, filariasis, kala azar (leishmaniasis), cancer, smallpox, yellow fever, and Chagas disease (Trypanasoma cruzi). Recently, the possibility of human immunodeficiency virus and hepatitis B virus (HBV) transmission by bed bugs has been investigated.
Human immunodeficiency virus can be detected in bed bugs up to 8 days after ingestion of highly concentrated virus in experimental blood meals. However, no viral replication has been observed within the insects and no virus has been detected in bed bug feces. Mechanical transmission of human immunodeficiency virus has not been demonstrated using an artificial system of feeding bed bugs through membranes.
The best candidate for human disease transmission by bed bugs is HBV. Bed bugs collected from huts in an HBV endemic area in northern Transvaal, South Africa, were hepatitis B surface antigen positive, as were samples collected from Senegal, Egypt, the Ivory Coast, and China. Hepatitis B surface antigen has also been shown to persist in bed bugs for more than 7 weeks after experimental feeding, but no replication of HBV was detected in the insects. Polymerase chain reaction assays have detected HBV DNA in bed bugs and their excrement up to 6 weeks after feeding on infected blood. Despite these findings, a 2-year bed bug eradication project in Gambia had no effect on rates of HBV infection, despite 100% reduction of bed bug numbers.
To our knowledge, no study to date has demonstrated bed bug "vector competence" (the ability to acquire, maintain, and transmit an infectious agent), and an attempt to demonstrate vector competence for HBV failed in an experiment with chimpanzees. In that experiment, bed bugs were fed HBV-infected blood through an apparatus containing artificial skin-like membranes. Two weeks later, approximately 50% of the insects contained virus. These insects then took blood meals from chimpanzees, but no infections or seroconversions resulted in the primates. When the same blood used to infect the insects was injected into the chimpanzees, they rapidly developed HBV infection.
Although evidence for disease transmission by bed bugs is equivocal, issues of vector competence, reactions to insect bites, embarrassment, and mental anguish have been the basis for lawsuits against landlords and lodging corporations.
Bed Bugs (Cimex lectularius) and Clinical Consequences of Their Bites:
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/301/13/1358Bleibt also nur der Ekelfaktor und natürlich der Aderlaß sowie die Möglichkeit allergischer Reaktionen auf Speichel oder Exkremente der Viecher. Aber Recherchen erwartet wohl auch keiner von BZ oder Springer.
