A story from the Huffington Post last week said that Bed Bugs tend to avoid humans with higher alcohol levels. So get your drink on this weekend, people!
The common bed bug mainly survives on human blood, but what happens when that human has upped his or her blood alcohol content with a few glasses of a nice red wine? New research from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln suggests bed bugs are not as fond of alcohol as their boozy hosts, which may lead to fewer bug bites.
According to the study, bed bugs prefer alcohol-free blood to blood with alcohol in it; the higher the blood alcohol concentration (BAC), the less the bugs eat. And, because there is a direct link between blood intake and reproduction rates, those bugs also lay fewer eggs.
“[Bed bugs] need a blood meal to grow and to molt and to reproduce,” explained Ralph Narain, a Ph.D. candidate who conducted the work as part of his dissertation. “And one of their main hosts are humans, and we consume a lot of stuff. Alcohol was one of the easier ones to start with.”