By Disease Name > Jigger Flea

Insect Vectors

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Reduvid bug

•AKA assassin bug, kissing bug, cone-nosed bug        
•large insects with distinct elongate cone-shaped heads
•vectors for:   T. cruzi (Chagas disease)
•transmits through defecation
•Romania’s sign – periorbital swelling

 

 

 

Fleas

•long legs (jumpers), no wings
•therefore bite on lower legs
•vector for – plague (bubonic), endemic (murine) typhus

 

jigger flea (Tunga penetrans)

•AKA burrowing flea, chigoe
•not to be confused with a “chigger” (a mite)
•burrows into the skin of the toes or soles of feet; produces eggs and dies still embedded in the tissue

 

 

Flies

MYIASIS

•human bot fly (Dermatobia hominis)
•females lay eggs on the abdomens of captured mosquitoes, who deposit the eggs on the skin of a warm-blooded host (e.g. humans)

 

Bartonella bacilliformis

•vector = sand fly
•two stages of the same infection:
•Oroya fever – acute febrile stage
•Verruga Peruana – chronic delayed stage
•weeks to months after acute infection
•eruptive, PG-like
•clinically and histologically the lesion are virtually identical to bacillary angiomatosis (but organisms stain with Giemsa in verruga peruana)
•endemic to Peru (500-3200 meters above sea level in the Andes)