Taxonomic research on house dust mites carried out by acarologists doesn’t exist in Mexico since 1991. However, the allergologists should know the sources of allergens present in their country. A survey of dust samples from six locations was made in Mexico to determine the diversity of indoor acarofauna.
Methods:
All the samples of dust (1g each) were collected with vacuum cleaners from mattresses of allergic patients from 10 georeferenced houses in each of 6 localities (3 coastal and 3 continental) from Mexico during February 2010 and May 2011. The mites were isolated by the sedimentation flotation method Spieskma-Boezeman 1967. All the identified material was deposited in a Basic Collection from Rocel Laboratories in Puebla and in the National Collection of Acarology from the Institute of Biology, UNAM, Mexico.
Results:
Eleven mite species were found of which the most important were house dust mites, specially: Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus (Trouessart, 1897) and Dermatophagoides farinae Hughes, 1961. Both species were reported for the first time for the six localities under study. Dermatophagoides siboney Dusbabek, Cuervo and Cruz, 1982 is a vicariant species of D. farinae and was registered for the first time for Mexico in Ciudad del Carmen, Campeche, but we consider this result should be corroborated in future studies. Blomia tropicalis (Bronswijk, Cook and Oshima, 1973) was also registered for the first time for Mexico in three of the six mexican localities and it has a tropical distribution. This last species has been used in Mexico for skin tests and this result favours its use for diagnosis and inmunotherapy.
Conclusions:
This survey revealed the existence of house dust mites in Mexico. It seems there are differences between the geographical distribution of the species because of the local conditions of temperature and humidity of each urban ecosystem. This knowledge may be useful in the field of allergy medicine.