Eating the armadillo is dangerous – log skating

Eating the armadillo in Brazil is associated with an additional risk of leprosy, an infectious bacterial disease that damages the skin and nerves. A team of researchers whose immunologist Annemieke Geluk of the LUMC in Leiden, writes in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases

. The team investigates 146 inhabitants of Belterra in the 39th. State of Pará in northeastern Brazil. They found that people who reported having at least once a month a nine-band armadillo (Dasypus novemcinctus) had significantly more antibodies against the leprosy bacteria in their blood. Sixteen wild armadillos were infected by ten persons infected with leprosy. Wild can therefore be a source of the disease.

Brazil is after India the country where leprosy is still the most prevalent, with more than 25,000 new infections a year. Incidentally, most people are infected with regular, intensive contact with untreated patients.

Antibiotics

"The World Health Organization wants to fight leprosy by treating all patients near a patient with antibiotics," Geluk says. "But that does not take into account other sources that can also contribute to the diffusion, as we have shown in this study." Previously, in the American states of Florida and Louisiana, we have already shown that hunters are sometimes infected with leprosy armadillo bacteria. "

Eating armadillos is officially banned in Brazil, but because of poverty. They are not aware of the risk of leprosy. The transfer of the bacteria can take place during the slaughter of the animal. Cooking probably kills the bacteria. However, researchers report that raw armadillo liver, mixed with shredded onions, is a delicacy in the region. And it is precisely the liver that contains a high concentration of leprosy bacteria.

The leprosy bacterium never brought from Europe by settlers in South America, writes one of the co-authors Stewart Cole in a previous article . "From the man, the bacteria is transferred to the armadillo," says Geluk. "And I think that people and armadillos are now infecting themselves again and again, but if they manage to eliminate leprosy in humans, the disease can also disappear in armadillos."

Happiness works in Leiden on a new diagnostic test for leprosy. This is a test that detects antibodies, which should help to know if humans or armadillos have been in contact with leprosy bacteria.