Do bed bugs spread disease?

Bed bugs should not be considered as a medical or public health hazard. Bed bugs are not known to spread disease. Bed bugs can be an annoyance because their presence may cause itching and loss of sleep. Sometimes the itching can lead to excessive scratching that can sometimes increase the chance of a secondary skin infection.

Human immunodeficiency virus.

HIV has never been found in wild bedbugs. HIV survived for 8 days after experimental feeding, with no replication in bedbugs, and has never been observed in bedbug feces. Transmission assays from bedbugs to laboratory animals failed, despite very high virus concentrations. Thus, even though acquisition and persistence attest to partial vectorial competence, no evidence supports that such transmission may occur or has ever occurred. Therefore, to date, HIV is no longer a valid candidate pathogen for bedbug–borne transmission

So have bed bugs been shown to carry human disease? Not yet. In a clinical review published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, entomologist Jerome Goddard and medical doctor Richard deShazo combed the medical literature and could find no strong evidence showing bed bugs to be disease carriers. Based on collections from bed bugs, the hepatitis B virus (HBV) may be the best candidate for human disease transmission by bed bugs; however in an African study, a two-year eradication program that achieved 100% control of bed bugs had no effect on HBV infection rates. The authors concluded that "Although transmission of more than 40 human diseases has been attributed to bed bugs, there is little evidence that they are vectors of communicable disease."

They do, however, harbor human pathogens: At least 27 viruses, bacteria, protozoa and more have been found in bedbugs, although these microbes do not reproduce or multiply within the insects. Canadian researchers announced that bedbugs isolated from three individuals in a Vancouver hospital carried methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, aka MRSA. Still, there have been no reported cases that the bugs actually transmit human disease.