Infected with Chagas in California
In 2016 Lynn Hatton Hodson, 48, bought some land with her husband near Grass Valley, CA, in the rural foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Lynn is a successful businesswoman at an educational company and lives with her high school sweetheart husband, a retired US marine.
When they first bought the land, Lynn and her husband decided to tent in the 23 acres of hilly land they bought. It was idyllic amongst the pine trees and streams. She did notice a large bug bite afterwards but thought nothing of it.
“I was getting an EKG at Olive View Hospital and a nurse told me: ‘You can’t have Chagas, you are white.’”
Lynn Hodson
A year after her camping trip in 2017 she received a letter from the Red Cross after she had donated blood at a local church. She was shocked. The letter said she was diagnosed with “indeterminate Chagas disease.” She had never heard of it, so she started googling the disease and found the CECD’s phone number. When she called, Dr Hernandez told her that she probably didn’t have Chagas since she was born in the US and did not travel to endemic areas.
Tracking down the kissing bug
The quaint suburbs around the mountains of Riverside, California look like a set from a 1980s Hollywood movie. At the edge of town, a group of students head into the brushy, dry hills known as the Box Spring Mountains as the sun sets. An eerie orange light bathes the scene. They are carrying a generator, some flashlights, and a large tarp. Looking for ET? No, they are hunting for kissing bugs.
Chagas disease has been in the USA for thousands of years – traces of the disease have been found in mummified remains of humans discovered in Texas. The first “locally transmitted” case was reported in Texas in 1955, while in California the first case was reported in 1982. In 2016 the CECD published the first documented cases of someone likely infected in southern California – a 19-year old who often camps and bikes in Ventura County.
The bugs are found throughout California– even in the hills around LA’s Hollywood sign. All species of the bug in the state are capable of transmitting Chagas disease, but only a few cases have been officially reported. Some scientists believe climate change could be driving bugs north.
Christiane Weirauch, Professor of Entomology at the University of California, Riverside, is leading tonight’s bug hunt for triatominae, or kissing bugs. She has travelled the world hunting triatominae but can go just off campus “light trapping” to catch some specimens. In the Box Spring Mountains, the bugs live in wood rat dens.
With the sparkling lights of Riverside and Los Angeles in the valleys below, Professor Weirauch and her students set up a large tarp and a generator-powered light, attracting all sorts of bugs. Coyotes are not too far away in the brush.
Tonight, they find no bugs though.
“The weather has to be just right to catch kissing bugs.”
Christiane Weirauch, Professor of Entomology
Citations
- “Voices of Chagas in the USA.” DNDi Stories, 1 May 2019, stories.dndi.org/chagas-in-los-angeles/index.html.
- “Lynn Hodson” by Angela Boatwright https://stories.dndi.org/chagas-in-los-angeles/index.html
- “Kissing Bugs University of California” by Angela Boatwright https://stories.dndi.org/chagas-in-los-angeles/index.html