Patricia Dorn, a professor of biological science, led several of her students on a ten- day tropical field study in Guatemala in June, studying kissing bugs and their role in spreading Chagas disease.
The trip was made possible thanks to Dorn securing $180,542 of grant money from the National Institutes of Health to further her 17 years of Changas research.
Kissing bugs are the main transmitters of Chagas disease to humans, “which is the leading cause of heart disease, and by far the most serious parasitic disease, in terms of economic impact in Latin America,” Dorn said.
However, the disease is not isolated in Latin America — according to Dorn, the first human transmitted case of Chagas infection in the U.S. was discovered in Louisiana in July 2006.
Trypanosoma cruzi, a parasite carried in kissing bug’s feces, cause the disease.
Instead of spreading the parasite through blood transmissions and bites, the bugs transmit the parasite by defecating on their victims while feeding.
Humans contract the disease through scratching or rubbing the bug’s liquid feces into the bite wound or other orifices of the body. Once inside the body, the parasite stores in cells hidden away from bodily defenses that would normally eradicate the parasite, Dorn said.
“We call the disease a silent killer because many people experience mild symptoms and are unaware that they are infected for sometimes twenty years until they suddenly die of heart disease,” she said.
The Loyola students who traveled to Guatemala last summer participated in a collected effort with students from the University of Vermont and the University of San Carlos to understand the kissing bug’s role in spreading Chagas disease.
Under the coordination of Carlota Monroy from the University of San Carlos in collaboration with Dorn and Lori Stevens form the University of Vermont, each group was assigned a particular role in researching the bug.
Loyola students were responsible for collecting specimens of the bug from their different known habitats. They spent the majority of time searching out caves in the Mayan mountains, but also collected bugs from palm trees and thatch roofs.
“While the bugs prefer to live in the forests, human invasion into their habitats have caused several bugs to form new habitats inside the palm thatch roofs of houses, giving an easy access to humans,” Dorn said. “The goal of our studies is to stop transmission. We are trying ways to control the bug. We are never going to be able to eradicate it because it lives everywhere. We simply want to block transmission to humans.”
After collecting specimens, Dorn said she believes they have stumbled upon new strands of the insect that are visibly identical yet genetically diverse. With molecular techniques, Stevens was able to examine the abdomen of each bug to see what the bug has been feeding on. By identifying the diet of different strands of the bug, Dorn hopes to understand why certain strands are better at transmitting the parasite to humans than others, and how this relates to the bugs environment.
At the end of the trip, all the researchers met in Guatemala City for a daylong symposium of each group’s findings.
“Since we were all working with aspects of the project, it was helpful to get everybody together and share research to see a larger picture,” Dorn said.
All Loyola students who participated in the trip published their finding in academic journals and presented them at Loyola’s annual Undergraduate Symposium.
“It was a great trip, and I would do it again in a heartbeat,” Jonathan Kurtz, A’09, said.
Alex Ackel can be reached at
