The Woman Who Let 200,000 Bed Bugs Bite HerFor Science …

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They look like regular jars. For baby food, maybe. Or a charming collection of shells. But these jars are filled with tiny bloodsucking monsters. Theyre bedbugs, housed (and fed) as part of research to create a new kind of trap based on pheromones. Regine Gries and her husband, Gerhard, both biologists at Simon Fraser University just outside Vancouver, British Columbia, have perfected a chemical lure capable of enticing bedbugs away from our mattressesand our fleshand into traps. But science takes sacrifice: Every Saturday, Gries rolls up her sleeves, slips off her watch, and lets a thousand hungry bedbugs feast on her arms.

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Gries feeds as many as five jars worth at once, by holding the containers upside down against the length of her forearm and letting the bugs mouths (or, more specifically, their stylet fascicles) reach through the mesh and into her skin. Since the bedbugs get only one chance to eat per month, theyre hungry enough to overcome their natural fear of light; it takes just 10 minutes for all 1,000 of them to fill up. Gries likens the feeling of each bite to that of a mosquito, and shed know, having previously served as an all-you-can-eat buffet for the labs mosquito colony on another project. Since the bedbug research began in 2006, Gries has been bitten some 200,000 times.

Shes an ideal host for her tiny subjects: Some people suffer allergic reactions to bedbug bitesa population that includes her husband. When he tried to feed just a few dozen of the colonys residents, his arm swelled to twice its normal size. We went to one of these walk-in clinics, and the doctor didnt have a clue, Gries says. Her symptoms, on the other hand, are comparatively minor: itchiness and swelling for about two hours. (She also changes the jars before each feeding for hygiene.) Letting the colony feed on fresh human blood is also less complicated and less risky than other approaches. At first one of Gerhards grad students tried feeding the bedbugs chicken blood from a nearby slaughterhouse, but it turned out the chickens had been medicated, and their tainted blood nearly wiped out the entire colony. Next, Gries got permission for the bedbugs to feed from a group of research guinea pigs kept on campus. That didnt work either: The rodents had to be sedated and shaved before every single feeding, as the bedbugs couldnt eat properly through their fur. Eventually, Gries took pity on the guinea pigs and decided to become one herself.

Now that their chemical lure is finished, a Canadian company is using this research to build a commercial trap that it hopes to bring to market this year. Which means it may soon be possible to stop bedbugs in their tracks, thanks to Gries blood, sweat, and tears. Well, mostly blood.

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The Woman Who Let 200,000 Bed Bugs Bite HerFor Science ...