What Are Kissing Bugs? Do They Make You Sick?

How to Spot Them

The bugs have brown or black wings, sometimes with a ring of red, orange, or yellow stripes on the edge. They’re usually ½- to 1-inch-long, about the size of a penny. They’re also called cone-nosed bugs, bloodsuckers, cinches, and triatomine bugs.

Like mosquitoes and ticks, kissing bugs need blood to live. They usually suck it from animals, including dogs, but sometimes they bite people. They hide during the day and come out at night to eat.

Bite Marks

Most of the time, the bites don’t hurt. You may sleep right through them. The bugs might hit anywhere on the body, including the face, head, arms, and feet. Kissing bugs are so named because they like to bite around the mouth or eyes.

You’ll often see 2-15 bite marks in one area and maybe redness and swelling. It might be hard to tell them apart from other bug bites, minor skin irritations, or infections.

Where Do They Live?

If you draw a line on a map from California to Pennsylvania, kissing bugs are mostly found south of it. In the U.S., the bugs rarely live indoors. They’re more likely to be:

Under porches
In piles of leaves or wood
In outdoor dog houses or chicken coops
In nests and burrows of wild animals like rodents and opossums

Are They Harmful?

Most of the time, kissing bug bites are harmless. But they sometimes can cause two kinds of problems:

Allergic Reactions. Some people are allergic to kissing bug saliva. The skin near the bite might become red, swollen, and itchy. The most serious risk is anaphylactic shock. That’s when your blood pressure drops and you have trouble breathing. It can be deadly if you don’t get emergency treatment.
Chagas Disease. Kissing bugs sometimes have a parasite in their poop that causes Chagas disease. In most people, that causes mild or no symptoms. But in some, the infection can lead to serious, long-term heart problems or disease in the intestines.

Chagas disease from a kissing bug is very rare in humans in the U.S. But the number of cases is growing in southern parts of the country.

Treatment

You usually don’t need to do anything. You can wash the bitten area with soap and water. If it’s itchy or uncomfortable you can use:

An ice pack
Antihistamine or steroid creams
Over-the-counter antihistamine pills

If you’re in an area where Chagas disease is a serious health concern and you get a kissing bug bite, see your doctor if:

You feel like you have a flu with a fever, nausea, or tiredness
Your eyelids are swollen
The bite looks infected (it’s red, painful, and swollen)

If you suddenly have trouble breathing, feel dizzy, or vomit, you may have a serious allergic reaction. Call 911 or go to the emergency room right away.

What Bit Me?

It can be hard to know where the bite came from, especially if the bug is gone when you wake up. You could check under your nightstand or your mattress. Scoop up any bugs you find into a container with gloved hands and clean the area the bug touched with bleach.

Then call your local health department or extension service to see if someone can help you figure out what kind of bug you have. A local college or university could help you, too.

Prevention

Most people in the U.S. don’t need to worry about kissing bugs. They don’t usually infest houses here, though an occasional bug might get inside.

If you’ve noticed them in your home or live in an area with Chagas disease, you can take steps to keep them away:

Seal cracks and gaps in your home to keep bugs out. Put screens in your windows and patch any holes.
Keep chicken coops and other animal cages away from your home.
Move piles of leaves, firewood, and rocks out of your yard.
Turn off outdoor lights near the house at night so they won’t attract bugs.
Clean your dog or cat indoor beds regularly.
Wear protective clothing, apply insect repellant to exposed skin, use bed nets treated with long duration insecticides.
Food and drink precautions: avoid salads, unpasteurized fruit juices, uncooked vegetables and unpeeled fruits.