Bed Bugs With MRSA Found in Vancouver

MRSA-Carrying Bed Bugs Found in Downtown East Side

If you thought bed bugs were scary, don't read the rest of this story. Bed bugs carrying MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, which can cause flesh-eating disease) were found in Vancouver's beleaguered Downtown East Side.

The DTES is one of the worst urban blights in North America and Canada's poorest neighborhood, and both bed bugs and MRSA have been present on DTES-based patients at local hospitals. Doctors at St. Paul's Hospital on Burrard Street began wondering if there was a link, and it turned out that there was: They found bed bugs carrying drug-resistant MRSA. 

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Smashed! Evil bed bug (and I suspect my blood)

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uploaded by timbeckenham

The Downtown East Side has a high population of intravenous drug users (NowPublic's old offices were in the DTES, and Jordan would see people shooting up in the streets daily when opening the office at 6am), and skin lesions and open wounds make great footholds for MRSA to escalate into a flesh-eating disease.

This is key, since bed bugs are considered to be incapable of spreading disease to humans by themselves: if the victim's skin is already compromised, that would help to explain why those bitten by bedbugs in this particular neighborhood.