And the majority of the cases, roughly 70 percent, are presumed to be from people who picked up the bacteria while traveling abroad.īut a new study, published in the April 28 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, found a new strain of the disease, common to both local people and armadillos, suggesting that the animals are, indeed, a wild reservoir for leprosy.

there are only about 150 to 200 new cases reported each year-and about 3,600 people being treated for the chronic condition. Although many cases might go undiagnosed, in the U.S. The nine-banded armadillo ( Dasypus novemcinctus) is common across parts of more than a dozen southern states. That humans would catch the disease from these armored animals might seem unlikely. Did Abide ever imagine as a Mississippi dermatologist he would be treating leprosy patients? 'No, indeed,' he says. None of them had been traveling where leprosy was common, but all three reported close contact with armadillos. In the next few years, he came across two other local patients-an 81-year-old woman with a growth above her left elbow and a 73-year-old man with a red rash on his chest-who also tested positive for leprosy, also known as Hansen's disease. 'I didn't know that they still studied it-or that it was still in existence.' When they came back positive, Abide was stunned. 'I thought that was a waste of time,' he says. When the results came back positive for atypical mycobacteria, another doctor suggested sending the samples away to have them tested for leprosy. Abide diligently tested samples to make sure they did not indicate tuberculosis. Unbeknownst to the man, two large red bumps had formed on his back. Leprosy was one of the last things on dermatologist John Abide's mind when a 78-year-old man walked in for a screening at the doctor's Greenville, Miss., practice.

Armadillo animal