![]() Photo: Claudio Salgado/Federal University of Pará More than 18 percent, or 27 people, identified themselves as hunters. 65 percent also ate armadillo meat at least once a year.65 percent were involved in either cleaning the meat or preparing it for cooking, and.65 percent of people surveyed had some contact with armadillos.What they found was astonishing, said Spencer: Scientists asked questions about the extent of contact with armadillos: Did they hunt or kill the animals, handle armadillo meat, or eat the meat? The research team, which also included scientists from Switzerland and the Netherlands as well as three universities in Brazil, surveyed 146 people living in the town of Belterra. Survey sought answers about contact with armadillos The best way to diagnose the disease is through clinical signs and symptoms, including skin lesions, loss of sensation and nerve damage, pain and inflammation. leprae, but it is not a good indicator of disease progression. Testing positive for the antibody means that a person has been infected with M. “More than 50 percent of people in this area, on average, will be positive for the antibody, PGL-I, and the rate is even higher, over 90 percent, for some leprosy patients.”Ī person can test positive for the antibody but still not have the disease, Spencer said. “This region has one of the highest new case detection rates in the whole country,” Spencer explained. In comparison, the total number of new leprosy cases found in the U.S. ![]() ![]() In Brazil, clinicians diagnose about 25,000 cases of leprosy each year. “In the western Pará state in Brazil’s Amazon region, leprosy is already hyper-endemic,” said Spencer, senior author of the study and an associate professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Pathology. John Spencer, senior author of the study and an associate professor, said what the research team found was astonishing. But when Juliana Portela, a graduate student at the Federal University of Pará in Brazil, proposed conducting a survey of people who hunt, kill and eat armadillos to see if they were at increased risk for leprosy, her advisors - including CSU’s John Spencer - were skeptical. ![]() leprae to people in Texas, Louisiana and Florida, where humans come into contact with the animals. The study, “ Evidence of zoonotic leprosy in Pará, Brazilian Amazon, and risks associated with human contact or consumption of armadillos,” was published in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases.Īrmadillos have been shown to transmit M. The findings from this new research have implications for public health education programs related to these mammals and zoonotic transmission, or the spread of infection between animals and people. leprae to humans by nine-banded armadillos in the southern United States. Other researchers have previously documented transmission of M. Mycobacterium leprae can cause leprosy, a chronic disease characterized by lesions of the skin and nerve damage, in humans. An international team led by researchers at Colorado State University has found that human contact with wild armadillos - including eating the meat - has contributed to extremely high infection rates of a pathogen that can cause leprosy in Pará, Brazil.
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