Chagas disease, long considered only a threat abroad, is established in California and the Southe…

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Chagas disease, long considered only a threat abroad, is established in California and the Southern U.S.

It’s one of the most insidious diseases you’ve never heard of, but Chagas is here in California and 29 other states across the U.S.

It kills more people in Latin America than malaria each year, and researchers think roughly 300,000 people in the U.S. currently have it but are unaware.

That’s because the illness tends to lie dormant for years, making itself known only when its victim keels over via heart attack, stroke or death.

Chagas disease is caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, which lives in a bloodsucking insect called the kissing bug. There are roughly a dozen species of kissing bugs in the U.S. and three in California known to carry the parasite. Research has shown that in some places, such as Los Angeles’ Griffith Park, about a third of all kissing bugs harbor the Chagas disease parasite.

Insects carrying Chagas disease are in California. How worried should you be?

There are about 200 species of kissing bugs around the world, including 11 that have been identified in the U.S., according to UC Berkeley researcher Bernardo Moreno Peniche. Nine of them have been found to be infected with the parasite that causes Chagas disease. The dead bugs pictured here were in Texas.

A group of scientists this month published an article in a prominent medical journal urging the U.S. to classify Chagas disease — an unusual but potentially deadly disease caused by a parasite that lives in blood-sucking insects — as endemic.

This prompted a recent spate of news coverage about Chagas disease, which has historically been more prevalent in Central and South America. California is one of 32 states where the insect that carries the parasite has been found; California is also one of eight states where humans have acquired the infection locally from the insects. 

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