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Abstract

Introduction: The house dust mites are allergen source that trigger allergies symptoms. In Pacific and Caribbean continental countries various species are prevalent in domestic environment and include in the allergy tests. However, its altitudinal and geographic distribution is unknown.

Objective: Review the historical records of house dust mites in the countries of the Pacific and continental Caribbean of Latin America.

Methods: A systematic review was carried out, adapting the PRISMA method, in digital repositories using a combination of the terms in Spanish: “ácaros domésticos” “alergia” and in English: “dust mites” “allergy” with the names of the countries “Costa Rica”. “Panama” “Venezuela” “Colombia” “Ecuador” “Peru” between 1970-2022. The inclusion criteria were presence of the mite species, city or municipality, country, height above sea level and year. A database was built in Microsoft Excel Office 365®. Maps were created using QGIS 3.30 geographic information systems and descriptive statistics were used to analyze the findings.

Results: From the search and identification, 3959 references were obtained, of which 133 were considered potentially eligible, of these 45 met inclusion criteria, and only 32 presented records of domestic mite species. Historically there were 424 records and 27 species (18 genera and 9 families). The countries with the most studies and records were Colombia (14 and 242), Panama (8 and 64) and Peru (5 and 74). 66% (281/424) of the records were of the species Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus (81), followed by Blomia tropicalis (58), D. farinae (40), Chortoglyphus arcuatus (39), Cheyletus sp. (33) and Euroglyphus maynei (30). The species with the greatest altitudinal range were D. pteronyssinus, (2-4800 m.a.s.l) and E. maynei (2- 3399 m.a.s.l).

Conclusions: A synthesis was presented on the historical geographical and altitudinal distribution of house dust mites in countries of the Pacific and continental Caribbean of Latin America, which in turn allowed us to determine the species with the greatest records, highlighting those of importance in allergology. These findings are an input for acarological surveillance in public health.

Keywords: Dust mite allergy, Caribbean, Pacific, Records, Review.