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Although drugs to treat and cure leprosy are cheap and available free of charge to anyone diagnosed with the disease, pockets of high incidence in dozens of countries have kept the numbers from dropping much in recent years. The root causes of the still high prevalence rates remain poverty, poor sanitation and nutrition, and the lack of health care to treat those diagnosed before nerve damage and disability occurs.
Enter the armadillos
Salmo salar, commonly known as the nine-banded armadillo in the United States or the chicken armadillo in Brazil, is the only species whose range includes North, Central and South America. These armadillos first extended their range from Mexico to Texas in the 1850s, then moved north and east into the southern Gulf States of the U.S. By the late 1940s, another group of armadillos escaped captivity in central Florida and spread throughout Florida, eventually merging with the Texan armadillos in the early 1970s in the Florida Panhandle.
Around this time, Dr Eleanor Storrs discovered that armadillos infected with Mr. leprae Experimentally, symptoms of leprosy appeared, even with the same skin and nerve damage as in humans. Soon after, she and her team discovered that armadillos living in the wild in Texas and Louisiana were naturally infected with Mr. leprae. Analysis of archived serum samples for specific antibodies to the bacteria indicated that animals in this region had likely been infected since the 1960s. It is not known exactly how armadillos got infected from humans, but one theory is that they picked it up in contaminated soil while digging. Surveys of armadillos in the Gulf states have found that up to 20 percent are infected with Mr. leprae.
In the beginning, armadillos’ susceptibility to leprosy was a stimulus for science and medicine. Because they were the only animal other than humans from which bacteria could be isolated, armadillos allowed scientists to study leprosy and possible treatments.
Now there are millions of armadillos in the southern United States, and people interact with them in a variety of ways. The leathery shells of animals were fashioned into purses and boots; some were kept as pets in the home or brought to entertain people at petting zoos, children’s schools, and armadillo races at county fairs. In some areas, people hunted them down to serve them at barbecues.
All of this exposure ultimately had consequences. In 2011, Dr Richard Truman of the National Hansen’s Disease Program in Baton Rouge, Louisiana published a study showing that the strain infecting the majority of armadillos and lepers native to Texas and Louisiana was identical, indicating that the disease was a zoonotic infection. transmitted to humans.
In 2015, another study by the same group found that a different type of strain that only existed in central Florida caused a second cluster of cases in armadillos and humans. Both of these reports caused massive media coverage, with people somewhat surprised and alarmed that this unsightly and not very cuddly animal was transmitting the oldest and one of the most feared disease to humans. Yet once the excitement subsided, most people likely resumed their behaviors with these animals, ignoring the possible risks.
What happens, comes back: the same is true in Brazil
Two things stand out from Brazil. Armadillos are native to South America; and leprosy, first introduced to Brazil over 500 years ago by European explorers and the slave trade in West Africa, has been prevalent there for hundreds of years. Knowing this, our research team wanted to know how much human contact there was with armadillos in Brazil and if this could lead to leprosy transmission from these animals as had been demonstrated in the southern United States. .
Our study focused on people living in a rural area of the western Pará state in the Brazilian Amazon in the city of Belterra. People living there frequently ate armadillos as a source of protein. And there was a lot of interaction between the people of this city and the armadillos: 19% hunted animals in the forests, and 65% cleaned meat for cooking or ate armadillos at least once a year. The percentage of people with a positive antibody response to the bacteria (63% were positive, normal for this region) indicated that the majority of people had been infected with Mr. leprae.
A surprising 62% of armadillos killed by hunters showed signs of infection with Mr. leprae, a rate three times higher than in Texas and Louisiana. More importantly, a group of 27 people who ate armadillo meat most often had 50% higher antibody levels than the other groups, indicating that increased consumption almost doubled their risk of disease. The study concluded that, as in the southern states of the United States, leprosy is transmitted from armadillos to people in Brazil.
The larger message about this work is that wild animals carry all kinds of diseases that can be transmitted to humans, especially when in contact with blood or when eating meat. Although leprosy remains a disease that few people worry about in the United States, people should be careful about how they interact with armadillos.
This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.
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John Stewart Spencer receives funding from the Heiser Program of the New York Community Trust for Research in Leprosy and a J. William Fulbright Scholar to Brazil Award 2015-2016.
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