ONCE BITTEN: Rachel Curtis-Robles, a PhD student also at A&M, examines kissing bugs.GABRIEL L. HAMER
ONCE BITTEN: Trevor Tenney, a second-year veterinary medical student at Texas A&M University, samples a dog at a shelterJESSICA RODRIGUEZDogs infected with Trypanosoma cruzi—the parasite that causes Chagas disease—may not show symptoms for years until, one day, their hearts fail. T. cruzi can infect animals that ingest or are bitten by assassin or “kissing” bugs, a variety of insect species in subfamily Triatominae that are widespread in the Americas. Left undetected and untreated, Chagas can become chronic and fatal in canines. Some humans infected with Chagas face a similar fate. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as many as 8 million people worldwide have Chagas disease—and most of them don’t know it.
The disease and its vectors are endemic to South and Central America, but both are spreading north, and confirmed cases of canine Chagas are on the rise across Texas, especially in southern portions of the state. Last year, the Texas Department of State Health Services made animal Chagas a notifiable condition, meaning veterinarians must report cases of the infectious disease to health officials within a week of confirming them.
In the past eight years, veterinarian Roy Madigan of the Animal Hospital of Smithson Valley in Spring Branch, Texas, has treated more than 100 dogs for Chagas disease. Madigan jokingly recalls having snoozed through a vet school parasitology lecture on T. cruzi in 1999, “because it was presented as ‘This is a Mexico and South [America–based] ...
