How to tell if you've brought bedbugs back from holiday: Rhonda returned from France covered in itchy welts... MONTHS later her home is still riddled. These are the warning signs - and the ways to avoid infestation

Rhona Hutchinson went to northern France with her husband earlier this year with the hope of making memories. Instead, the 59-year-old businesswoman from Derbyshire returned with bed-bugs that still infest her house and have covered her body in itchy welts.It was a few days after returning from her French trip in April with husband Sean, 62, who works in home renovations, that Rhona started to itch and noticed clusters of bites on her arms and neck.‘I react badly to mosquito bites and as these were so red and puffy I thought it was down to them,’ she says.‘I started applying mosquito repellent to prevent further bites and also steroid cream for the itch.’But the bites kept coming. ‘Soon I was covered – my back, neck and upper arms. I thought this can’t be mosquitoes as we never heard them buzzing around.’Rhona looked up her symptoms online and one word came up: bedbugs. A pest control exterminator who came to the house found a host of bedbugs – and they thought the infestation came in her luggage from France, as Rhona had never had a problem with the bugs before.‘I was horrified,’ she says. ‘I associated them with dirty places and I am a clean freak.’There will be plenty of others now in the same situation.Roughly the size, shape and colour of an apple seed, bedbugs feed exclusively on blood, says Richard Naylor Bedbug activity peaks between the spring and early autumn and ‘longer warms spells mean their numbers are increasing,’ says Dr Richard Naylor, an entomologist (scientist who studies insects) and founder of the Bedbug Foundation CIC, a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to raising standards in the detection and management of bedbugs.Roughly the size, shape and colour of an apple seed, bedbugs feed exclusively on blood, he adds.‘Bedbugs live around beds because they live off the blood of their victims, attracted by the carbon dioxide humans emit when we breathe,’ says Richard Naylor.‘They emerge from their hiding place at night, feed for a few minutes, and then return to the safety of their crevice.’Bedbug bites normally appear in telltale lines, says Dr Sidra Khan, a consultant dermatologist at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust.These appear as ‘small, intensely itchy red bumps, classically in a line or cluster of three or four, often called “breakfast, lunch and dinner’, explains Dr Khan, who is also a spokesman for the British Skin Foundation.They may resemble severe mosquito bites, with significant swelling and inflammation.‘They are typically very itchy and may still be visible after several weeks,’ says Dr Khan.Rhona Hutchinson from Chesterfield, who got bedbugs while on holiday in France still sometimes struggles to sleep with worry that she is being bittenThe bites typically appear on exposed skin at the face, neck, arms and hands – but the swelling is often delayed by hours or days, so people often struggle to pinpoint where and when they were bitten.‘The skin reaction isn’t simply caused by the physical bite, it is largely an immune response to proteins in the bedbug’s saliva,’ she adds.If you have previously been bitten you might react more quickly, ‘as the immune system has previously encountered proteins in bedbug saliva and has developed a hypersensitivity response to them’, says Dr Khan.‘On subsequent exposure, the skin may then react more quickly. It’s why one partner can wake up covered in bites while the other, in the same bed, is completely clear.’Around a third of people don’t react to a bedbug bite at all and children tend to react more strongly than older people, due to their young, active immune system, she says.Bedbugs don’t spread disease, but the constant scratching can ‘damage the skin barrier – allowing bacteria that normally live on the skin to enter,’ says Dr Khan.This can cause impetigo, a contagious bacterial skin infection, ‘or, less commonly, cellulitis, where the infection spreads into the deeper layers of the skin,’ she adds.‘Prolonged scratching also causes thickened skin and long-lasting dark marks, particularly in darker skin types.‘Increasing pain, warmth, swelling or feeling feverish and generally unwell would be reasons to seek medical advice.’Antihistamine tablets can help reduce the itch, she adds – but if the itching is interrupting sleep, she suggests trying a sedating antihistamine such as chlorphenamine.‘They aren’t suitable for everyone, though, so speak to a pharmacist or doctor and follow the advice on the product,’ she urges.But the itch is often not the worst part: ‘The most underestimated complication is psychological: insomnia and anxiety are very common and often outlast the rash.‘Knowing or suspecting that insects are biting you while you sleep can understandably cause significant anxiety, disturbed sleep and a fear of going to bed, and this can sometimes per-sist even after the skin itself has settled.’Rhona says she was ‘going out of my mind checking daily for bedbugs, looking every night before bed, putting my duvet in a sealed large plastic box, washing everything at 60C'Richard Naylor has known people whose fear of bedbugs reinfesting their home becomes the focus of their lives, even after the infestation has been eradicated.‘This heightened state of bedbug awareness can be exhausting,’ he says. ‘They may turn on the lights repeatedly throughout the night to inspect every skin sensation.’Months after her French trip, Rhona still sometimes struggles to sleep as she lies awake ‘going out of my mind’ with worry that she is being bitten.Meanwhile, Erin Paige, 24, a marketing executive from Gwyned, Wales, suffered weeks of anxiety after being bitten by bedbugs on a trip to Paris this summer.She awoke with three welts on her leg after her first night in a budget hotel in June.‘I actually stopped, mid-sightseeing and went on the internet to lookup the hotel and anything about bugs. To my horror dozens of reviews about bedbugs popped up,’ she says.When she returned to the hotel she lifted the mattress and saw three adult bedbugs on the wooden bed slat, along with hundreds of eggs and black faecal matter – a sign of bedbug infestation.‘I ran to reception, but there was no one there – and it was 1am.‘I found two plastic chairs and put them together in my room and slept upright on them, very uncomfortably.’When she arrived back in the UK her mum picked her up at the airport armed with plastic sacks which she put her clothes in-to which were boil washed.‘I had to throw away a £200 leather jacket as I was convinced they were in the lining,’ she says.The bites – about the size of a mosquito bite – got ‘angrier, larger and itchier’ over the next few days and Erin needed a steroid cream to soothe it.‘It took around four weeks to clear and during that time I was so anxious I might have brought them home.’Sarah Spratt, a pest controller who runs The Bed Bug Queen, a bedbug treatment service based in London, says: ‘Bedbugs are much more common than people think.‘You won’t just find them in hotels, it’s public transport, taxis, cinemas, theatres, hospitals. Anywhere with a high footfall has a higher risk.’ Erin Paige, 24, a marketing executive from Gwyned, Wales, suffered weeks of anxiety after being bitten by bedbugs on a trip to Paris this summerThey typically hide in bed bases, behind headboards, or in countersunk screw holes in the bed base.But if you are staying in an infested hotel or Airbnb and leave a bag on the bed, then you may bring the bugs home as ‘a hungry bug may emerge from its hiding place to feed and then crawl into your bag because it appears to provide a convenient hiding place in the vicinity of the feeding site,’ adds Richard Naylor.If there is a luggage stand in your room, he recommends always putting your luggage on that instead.Bedbug numbers have been surging in recent years, partly due to ‘extremely high levels of resistance’, to pyrethroids, the form of insecticide used to kill them.Whereas once these insecticides killed bedbugs in two hours, overuse has helped the bugs become resistant to them – and so ‘modern bedbugs can survive more than two weeks of continuous exposure with no obvious ill effects’, says Richard Naylor.More international travel, the popularity of buying second-hand furniture and the decline of routine council pest-control services also helped bump up bedbug numbers in the UK, says Dr Khan.There are various ways to eradicate bedbugs.Washing bedlinen at 60C wash and tumble drying on a hot set-ting for at least 30 minutes can help.They can also be vacuumed up – or you can use DIY insecticide sprays, although infestations that have spread through multiple rooms often require professional treatment, says Richard Naylor.Professionals use insecticides on wider scale or use heat-treatment equipment that damage the proteins and enzymes essential for the insect’s survival.Sarah Spratt says people should not move out of an infested room.‘If you move to the spare room or lounge the bedbugs will just move there, too,’ she says.After finding bedbugs in her home Rhonda called in an exterminator who sprayed her home with insecticide.For the first week, Rhona had no more bites.‘I thought it had worked and was thrilled,’ she says. ‘But then I got bitten – I checked behind the bed and lo and behold saw one adult and some eggs.’The pest controller did another treatment, but Rhona says she was ‘going out of my mind checking daily for bedbugs, looking every night before bed, putting my duvet in a sealed large plastic box, washing everything at 60C.‘Nothing helped. I was still being bitten. Strangely my husband never reacted once. Only I did.’Rhona is now ‘paranoid’ about the threat of bedbugs.When she travels for work, ‘I always leave my suitcase outside on the front porch when I return home, wash all my clothes at 60C, then vacuum and spray my case.‘I just hope the next [scheduled] visit from the exterminator is the last.’