The medical community should not scapegoat spiders for
bacterial infections, advises UC Riverside spider expert Richard Vetter
Can spiders be carriers of human pathogens? Can they provoke an infection through a break
in the skin?
A team of scientists, led by an entomologist at the
University of California, Riverside, has data-mined the history of publications
on spider envenomations to conclude that the evidence for spider-vectored
infection is scanty. Further, the
researchers note that the mere presence of bacteria on spider fangs or
mouthparts does not establish spiders as vectors for these bacteria.