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Hey Opus ... Have You Been Tree Hugging Lately???
Cuz if you have been, stay away from me! I don't want any of your fleas!
Scientific sleuths look into what's bugging itchy Kansans
By MELODEE HALL BLOBAUM
The Kansas City Star
An entomological whodunit has drawn a swarm of experts to southeast Kansas.
Entomologists, dermatologists and epidemiologists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Kansas State University and the Kansas Department of Health and Environment are tracking down an elusive critter that's causing an intensely itchy rash for people who spend time outdoors.
Kansas Health Department spokeswoman Sharon Watson said Thursday that the number of reports of the rash had climbed into the thousands in Crawford County.
That county's public health officer described it more simply.
“It would be difficult to find someone in Crawford County that has not been bitten,” Janice Goedeke said.
It's not clear whether Kansas City area residents have been bugged by the outbreak yet.
The Johnson County Health Department has fielded a growing number of calls about bug bites and rashes, including calls from school nurses in each of the county's school districts, said Nancy Tausz, division director for disease containment.
Most of the calls, however, have been from worried people wondering whether their bug bites or rashes were related to what they had read in news reports.
Don Pickard, spokesman for the Kansas City Health Department, said his office hadn't had any calls about itchy rashes or bug bites.
What makes the cases so unusual is that people don't feel the sting of a bite, Watson said.
Instead, they discover a rash that sometimes resembles hives or poison ivy, sometimes looks like a bug bite surrounded by a rash and sometimes looks like a pimple. In all cases, the rash is accompanied by an itch. An intense itch.
“It keeps people from sleeping,” Goedeke said.
At least one Overland Park resident is confident he has made contact with the critter, or more accurately, that it had made contact with him.
Johnson County had an infestation of hay itch mites in 1992 and 1994. Randy Schuldt said he'd experienced the bug bites then and quickly recognized the symptoms when he was bitten in the last week or so.
“You don't feel the bite,” he said. “But then they really itch for two or three days. After a week or so they're gone, but in between you'll probably get some more bites.”
The Kansas health department called in experts from the CDC late last week as the number of cases in the southeast part of the state grew and the cause remained elusive.
Investigators doubt that it has an environmental cause or that it is an airborne irritant, because that would affect the eyes or the respiratory system, which hasn't been the case in southeast Kansas, Watson said.
Rather, they suspect that the rash is caused by bites from insects — possibly biting midges or hay itch mites.
Hay itch mites, also known as grain itch mites, are one of two leads that Ludek Zurek, assistant professor of medical entomology at Kansas State University, is pursuing.
He said that the microscopic insects infested other bugs that live in straw, grain or other stored products and that their bites resembled the symptoms reported in southeast Kansas.
Zurek's other lead is the biting midge, a microscopic fly. However, Zurek said one argument against the midge was that people typically felt its bite.
http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/9684384.htm
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