est that bed bugs are an unlikely vector of Bartonella spp. However, as Bartonella are emerging pathogens, adaptation to new hosts in conjunction with an expanding range of vectors BIRB-796 suggests that vector biologists should remain vigilant to the possibility of Bartonella occurring in bed bugs in the future. It is possible that other geographic regions, other Bartonella species, and other sites within the regions in which we collected might show different results. Vector competency studies, in which bed bugs are infected with the bacteria to determine the fate 
of the bacteria and the ability of bed bugs to infect a host, should be investigated to completely rule out bed bugs as potential vectors of Bartonella. We screened 99 bed bugs from 10 apartments of an elderly housing building in Raleigh, North Carolina. Five bed bugs from four different apartments yielded PCR products of the expected size for Bartonella spp., close to the Bartonella 3 Survey of Bartonella spp. in U.S. Bed Bugs henselae control. When these amplicons were sequenced, the alignments of the five sequences with BlastX were 98% similar to a sequence of Burkholderia multivorans, accession number YP001949472.1. As these amplicons were generated using Bartonella 16S-23S intergenic spacer primers, it is possible that more specifically designed primers for B. multivorans may detect higher prevalence of this pathogen in bed bugs. B. multivorans is recognized as an important pathogen in nosocomial infections of patients with cystic fibrosis, although it has not been linked to an arthropod vector. Amplification and sequencing of B. multivorans DNA from multiple bed bugs in multiple but nearby apartments suggests that this association should be investigated further to determine whether bed bugs are competent to vector B. multivorans between humans. Materials and Methods Sample Collection Adult bed bugs were sampled from 36 unique collections in 29 different geographic locations spanning 13 states. A total of 331 bed bugs were screened individually for Bartonella spp. DNA, 210 bed bugs per collection. Bed bugs were collected by pest control companies, collaborators, or by us and in all cases the resident or owner of the property gave permission to collect bed bugs from the site. In most locations specimens collected from a single room within an apartment or building were placed in a single collection vial, but in some samples bed bugs from multiple rooms were combined by the collector in a single vial. Most of the screened bed bugs were freshly field-collected and immediately stored in ethanol, but two collections were reared in the lab for approximately 3 yr before they were screened. Additionally, we screened five bed bugs from the Fort Dix colony which had been in culture since 1973, well before the bed bug resurgence in the late 1990s. CAAAGCA-39). The detection limit observed in 100% of 10 replicate PCR reactions was 2.5 DNA copies of B. henselae. Bed bug DNA was spiked with 2.5 copies of B. henselae DNA to determine if PCR inhibitors would interfere with successful amplification. No PCR inhibitors were detected in bed bug DNA. Additionally, to ensure that we could amplify bacterial DNA from bed bug 8825360 DNA samples, we randomly chose 10 bed bug DNA 12176911 samples from 10 distinct geographic locations and amplified bacterial DNA using bacteria specific 16S rDNA universal primers: 27F and 1492R . Bacterial DNA was amplified from all 10 samples, but amplicons were not sequenced. Bartonella sp