Flies, cockroaches and ants carrying pathogens: a public health problem

Abstract

Insects have great potential to be vectors or reservoirs of microorganisms. This research is an analysis of publications in Brazilian journals about flies, cockroaches and ants carrying pathogens, from 2011 to 2021. For the survey on the academic Google website, the keywords “flies, ants and cockroaches as carriers of pathogens”, “arthropod vectors of microorganisms”, “environment contamination by flies, cockroaches and ants” were used. The results showed few studies on the subject, the environment that was most found contaminated was the hospital environment associated with ants. Ants were also cited in a greater number of articles associated with bacteria. Next, fungi were found in large numbers, but they were associated with cockroaches. Regarding helminths, muscoid dipterans were found vectoring several immature forms of this group. Through this study, the importance of doing more research on the subject was highlighted, since these insects and their associations with pathogenic microorganisms lead to a serious public health problem in the environments.