House dust mite fauna in western Anatolia, Turkey

An increase in atopic diseases has become obvious in our time, principally in developed countries, and there are many factors that appear to contribute to this trend.Considerable variation within and between different countries has been attributed to factors such as living habits, occupation, humidity, climate, home standards and ventilation (Koosgaard, 1998).Mites living in house dust represent a major source of common allergens that cause sensitization and development of allergic diseases, especially asthma, rhinitis and atopy all over the world (Warner et al., 1999;Eggleston and Bush, 2001).House dust mites have a worldwide distribution; on the other hand, there are differences in the mite species due to different locations, seasons and climates.Most houses host multiple species of mites that feed on human skin scales, pollens, fungi, bacteria and animal dander.Human, cat, dog, and horse dander have been used to raise these species in the laboratory.Dust mites do not drink free water, but they absorb water from the air and the environment.The food consumption of these mites and their development increase high humidity.They do not survive well at low relative humidity, especially when the temperature is high (Demir et al., 1997;Arlian, 2001).The aim of this study was to investigate the mite species living in house dust in random samples from 5 cities of western Anatolia.The study was conducted with 290 house dust samples collected from cities Afyon, Us ¸ak, Isparta, Kütahya, and Denizli, whose altitude differs, but climate, geographic structures and life style are similar.These 5 cities are located in the inner part of Aegean region, western Anatolia, Turkey (Fig. 1).Since the coastal cities of this region have different climatic conditions from others, they were excluded from this