Zoonotic Leprosy in the U.S.

Despite suspicion that some leprosy patients in the U.S. might have acquired their disease from armadillos, causality has not been proven. To further explore this possibility, investigators performed an ecologic cohort study that involved skin-biopsy specimens from 50 leprosy patients who lived in the southern U.S. and tissue samples from 33 wild armadillos from the same geographic region.

Whole-genome sequencing, single nucleotide polymorphism typing, and variable-number tandem-repeat analysis were used to molecularly characterize the Mycobacterium leprae strains isolated from these samples.

One genotype, labeled 31-2-v1, appeared to be unique and highly distinctive and was significantly associated with a history of residence in regions wher…