美国国家公共电台 NPR Medieval Leprosy Lurks In British Squirrels

Medieval Leprosy Lurks 1 In British Squirrels

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When you hear the word leprosy, you might think of a bygone disease or one that exists only in a handful of places. Now scientists say an ancient form of leprosy may still be present and circulating in parts of Europe. NPR's Michaeleen Doucleff has the story.

MICHAELEEN DOUCLEFF, BYLINE 3: The word leprosy comes from the Latin term for scaly 4 because scaly ulcers 5 erupt over the body and face when you get leprosy. But Stewart Cole at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology says there's a bigger problem with the disease - people lose the ability to feel pain.

STEWART COLE: For instance, they can't feel heat anymore, so they could burn themselves. Or they could cut themselves and they don't feel the pain. And then this will lead to loss of fingers or toes.

DOUCLEFF: Leprosy has been around for thousands of years, and doctors pretty much thought they had it figured out. They can cure it with antibiotics 6, and they're even trying to eliminate it because leprosy was thought to live almost exclusively in people. So unlike, say, rabies, which also infects animals, if you get rid of the leprosy in people, the disease is gone forever. Then a few years ago, a curious study came out. It showed that right here in the U.S., armadillos were infecting people with leprosy, most likely from hunting and eating them. Now Cole and his team have found another place leprosy is hiding out.

COLE: In red squirrels.

DOUCLEFF: Yep, red squirrels in the U.K. And here's the kicker - some of the leprosy in the squirrels matches that found in a skeleton buried 700 years ago.

COLE: The very same strain which had caused disease in humans, you know, back in the Middle Ages was still present in these squirrels. That for me was a real gobsmacker.

DOUCLEFF: Gobsmacker indeed. Richard Truman leads a leprosy research project in Baton 7 Rouge 8. He says the new findings published in the journal Science suggest leprosy might be hiding out in other rodents 9 in many parts of the world.

RICHARD TRUMAN: And I think that that's paradigm-shifting for leprosy altogether. And in fact, one of the great mysteries of leprosy is how this disease can persist for such long periods of time. Where does it hang out? Where does it hide?

DOUCLEFF: And, he says, it just goes to show even after a disease looks like it's gone, it could be right outside your window, sitting in a tree.

Michaeleen Doucleff, NPR News.