Adult and the larvae feed on grains (hence the name mealworm), meat or decomposing animals including birds, spiders, rodents, lizards and some other beetles.
In 2016, the Department of Parasitology of the Sun Yat-sen University in Ghuanzhou, China, reported the first case of an eight-year-old baby girl infected by this beetle.
Given the limited number of records of scarabiasis occurrence in animals, the most frequent portal of entry of the agent in the host organism is still partially unknown.
Some reported cases of scarabiasis in humans from the early 20th century were collected in rural India by Strickland and Roy,[4] professors of medical entomology at the School of Tropical Sciences in Calcutta.
The authors speculated that the dung beetles could be attracted to the scent of human feces and crawl into the anus during defecation, but this theory was never confirmed.
Clinical manifestations of canthariasis vary greatly depending on the entry site of the invasion, the insect species, the number of larvae and their target tissue.
Dermatologic symptoms include boils, pruritus, erythema, and severe pain caused by the movement of larvae in the skin and in subcutaneous tissues.
In extreme cases, the larvae penetrate through the wall of the digestive tract and invade other organs; this, however, is rare, because most die before reaching the small intestines.
Untreated canthariasis may lead to death of the animal as a result of anaphylactic shock, intoxication or secondary bacterial infection of damaged host tissues.
A canthariasis case reported in Iran on a 10-year-old boy who was hit by an urogenital infection was a rare occurrence in which the beetle was hosted in the urinary system.