Article Source: Scientific American / 2014
The kissing bug may have the most misleadingly cute name in entomology. It bites, rather than smooches, its victims around the mouth or face. But far worse than the bite itself is what may find its way into it: wriggling worm-like parasitic protists called Trypanosoma cruzi that teem in the feces of these bugs, which they deposit without regard for their victims directly onto their face. The parasites may get rubbed into the wound by a sleeper scratching either bite or bug, and eventually burrow into victims' hearts. There they riddle the tissue for decades, feeding on blood or lymph and triggering a cascade of events that may cause fatal heart disease decades later in about a third of victims.
The infection is generally treatable with drugs that come with a distasteful array of side effects if the disease is caught in its early stages when most victims are unaware they are infected. But once symptoms emerge, the disease becomes increasingly difficult or impossible to reverse. In other words, kissing bugs might more aptly be named something like bloody filthy death bugs. They are kind of cute-looking, though.
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