Expensive choicesAdditionally, the relationships between the housemates became strained. “We also found it very unpleasant that one of our housemates had to get rid of his wardrobe. These are not things you want to ask of your roommates. Although Ongedierte Binnenshuis are necessary, they are unpleasant.” Ongedierte Binnenshuis was an open population study and therefore no specific patient representatives were involved in the set-up and design of the study. Participants from the general population, not patients, were involved in the execution of the study.
“It was clear that this could have happened to anyone,” says Sjoerd, “so we decided to share the responsibility and costs.” Multiple nestsSjoerd and Teun are fictitious names, as both students consider their story too sensitive to reveal their real names. Suddenly, his sheets had bloodstains and excrement in the form of small black dots. “As a result, we didn’t realise we had an infestation until it was too late. There were already several nests in my room.” This section collects any data citations, data availability statements, or supplementary materials included in this article.
The EDCs were returned in a closed plastic holder in a sealed plastic bag inside a sealed envelope and therefore posed negligible health risk to postal workers (less than if they were to enter one of the houses in question). The role of the landlordStudent housing provider SSH, from whom Sjoerd and Teun rent a room, is aware of the problems that bedbugs can cause. The landlord hopes that this will enable any infestation to be quickly identified and dealt with.
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The lack of an association may be due to almost 90% of the participants being non-smokers or rarely smoking in the house. The method we used to collect airborne dust was different to most studies, which collected dust by vacuuming dust from floors or furnishings [4,9,11,17]. However, it precludes a direct comparison to earlier reported allergen levels. An invitation letter was delivered to about 600 homes in Utrecht and other towns in the Netherlands in April–May 2017. The neighbourhoods were selected in order to represent different housing characteristics (age of buildings, economic status, proximity to canals or green areas, etc.). We distributed invitations to every house on 2–3 streets that were characteristic for the different neighbourhoods.
All participants were provided with a written report on the outcomes of the study. In addition to practical matters, the housemates argued a lot about who was to blame. Though the cause of the infestation remained unknown, it was easy to see that no one had been negligent.
A Mexican study of 264 homes also detected Mus m 1 in 60% of them and Rat n 1 in 10% [9]. The frequencies of measurable mouse allergen in the USA are generally higher; in a national survey, Mus m 1 was detected in 82% of homes [4]. In total, 80 households took part and most lived in the city of Utrecht (78.8%). The geographical distribution of participants is shown on a map in Supplementary Materials. Forty percent of participants reported one or more mouse sightings during the last year and ten percent reported rat sightings. The geometric mean of the level of allergens in settled dust in positive houses was 2.5 ng/m2 for mouse allergens (GSD 3.6) and 39.3 ng/m2 for rat allergens (GSD 3.4).
