A new study went to discover the reasons why bed bugs are becoming harder to kill.
A new study went to discover the reasons why bed bugs are becoming harder to kill. According to this research, these have seemingly become more resistant to most common insecticides used to terminate them.
Research results were released earlier this week in The Journal of Economic Entomology. The study team found bed bugs have started showing a lower susceptibility to most pesticides, especially to the two most common ones. These latter are known to contain bifenthrin and chlorfenapyr.
This Is The First Study To Point Out The Increased Pesticide Resistance Of The Bed Bugs
In order to confirm their theory, the research team tested 10 bedbug species. These were collected from across several states including Virginia, Tennessee, New Jersey, and Ohio. They were also gathered from Indiana and Washington DC. Then, the researchers subjected the collected specimens to a pesticide treatment.
Also, the team used a strain known to be susceptible to these insecticides as a control group. As such, they compared the impact of bifenthrin and chlorfenapyr on the two groups. The study went to verify how long it took before their effects started to kick in.
As it is, research noted that killing the collected specimens required a higher concentration of insecticides when compared to the control group. The bugs in this latter group died three days after being exposed to bifenthrin. It also took seven days before their exposure to chlorfenapyr killed them.
However, both these time frames were stretched out in the case of the 10 test populations. These took longer to perish after being exposed to the same quantity of such pesticides. Nonetheless, the research team pointed out as follows.
These ‘pesky insects’ are not unstoppable. “[…], both bifenthrin and chlorfenapyr should be integrated with other methods used for bed bug elimination in order to preserve their efficiency in the long term.”
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Michael Turner
