Probable zoonotic leprosy in the southern United States

Philippe Busso, Stewart Cole, Adamantia Kapopoulou, Jacques Rougemont, Rahul Sharma, Pushpendra Singh
2011
Article

Résumé

In the southern region of the United States, such as in Louisiana and Texas, there are autochthonous cases of leprosy among native-born Americans with no history of foreign exposure. In the same region, as well as in Mexico, wild armadillos are infected with Mycobacterium leprae.

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https://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/170376?ln=fr

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Comparative genomic and phylogeographic analysis of Mycobacterium leprae

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Detection and Strain Typing of Ancient Mycobacterium leprae from a Medieval Leprosy Hospital

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Public Library of Science2013

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Nine-banded armadillos (Dasypus novemcinctus) are naturally infected with Mycobacterium leprae and have been implicated in zoonotic transmission of leprosy. Early studies found this disease mainly in Texas and Louisiana, but armadillos in the southeastern United States appeared to be free of infection. We screened 645 armadillos from 8 locations in the southeastern United States not known to harbor enzootic leprosy for M. leprae DNA and antibodies. We found M. leprae infected armadillos at each location, and 106 (16.4%) animals had serologic/PCR evidence of infection. Using single-nucleotide polymorphism variable number tandem repeat genotyping/genome sequencing, we detected M. leprae genotype 31-2-v1 among 35 armadillos. Seven armadillos harbored a newly identified genotype (31-2-v15). In comparison, 52 human patients from the same region were infected with 31 M. leprae types. However, 42.3% (22/52) of patients were infected with 1 of the 2 M. leprae genotype strains associated with armadillos. The geographic range and complexity of zoonotic leprosy is expanding.

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