Bed bug battles: Is fungus the next frontier?

As bed bugs continue their blood-sucking scourge on Toronto currently targeting Ryerson University residences a new U.S. study shows that natural fungus is an effective way of killing the critters.

There are eight confirmed cases of the tiny critters at Ryerson, with most students living at the International Living and Learning Centre (ILLC) and a few in the Pitman Hall residence.

The rooms are being carefully treated by pest control experts right now, said Chad Nuttall, manager of Student Housing Services at the university. They will inspect and re-inspect the rooms until they are bed bug-free.

Affected students have been relocated to a temporary space in the ILLC while their rooms are treated, which usually takes about two weeks but can be longer depending on the severity of the situation.

Our students are our top priority and we are working very hard to resolve this issue for them and have them back into their dorms as soon as possible, said Nuttall.

He said the university provides information to students and parents on bed bug prevention during parent sessions. Also, fact sheets are distributed and students are told which items they can and cannot bring before arriving on campus.

But new research could end the battle against bed bugs. According to a team of entomologists at Penn State University, the parasites have met their match in a fungus called Beauveria bassiana, which grows naturally in soils and causes disease in insects.

As part of the study, published in the Journal of Invertebrate Pathology, researchers took paper and cotton jersey, commonly used in bed sheets. On one set they sprayed fungal spores and on the other blank oil. After the surfaces were dry, bed bugs were added for one hour.

All the bugs exposed to the biopesticide died within five days. But more important, the infected bugs carried the fungal spores back to their hiding places, infecting nearly all the other bugs. This is key because they tend to live in hard-to-reach places, such as electrical plates, under loose wallpaper and behind baseboards.

They dont even need to be directly exposed, and thats something chemicals cannot do, said researcher Nina Jenkins in a media statement. If you have bedbugs in your house ... what you really want to know is if theyve all gone at the end of the treatment, and I think thats something that this technology could offer.

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Bed bug battles: Is fungus the next frontier?