The Journal of the American Medical Association has featured a review discussing the health and medical effects of bed bugs and explores key issues in pest control and eradication efforts.

The review summarised information from 53 articles that met inclusion criteria, which included original accounts or investigations of bed bugs, clinical responses with sufficient detail of cause and effect between the bed bug bite and clinical response, and evidence of substantiated presence of bed bug exposure. For pest control, articles had to provide evidence that an eradication measure quantitatively decreased bed bugs.

The authors concluded that:
“Treatment options for cutaneous and systemic reactions from bed bug bites have not been evaluated in clinical trials and there is no evidence that outcomes differ significantly from those receiving no treatment. Evidence for disease transmission by bed bugs is lacking. Pest control and eradication is challenging due to insecticide resistance, lack of effective products, and health concerns about spraying mattresses with pesticides.”