Dangerous new coronavirus is one of more than 30 pathogens found in new study of Chinese fur farms

By Sarah Newey
Daily Telegraph UK·
4 Sep, 2024 


HKU5, a concerning new bat coronavirus, was discovered in the lungs and intestines of mink which had died from pneumonia. Photo / 123RF

A concerning new bat coronavirus is among 36 novel viruses detected among animals including racoon dogs, mink and guinea pigs in Chinese fur farms, scientists have warned.

The results, published in Nature journal this week, reiterate the risk posed by small-scale fur farms, which continue to proliferate in China and Southeast Asia. It also expands the list of animals known to be susceptible to zoonotic pathogens, including novel coronaviruses, bird flu and Japanese encephalitis.

“Fur farms represent a far richer zoonotic soup than we thought,” said Professor Eddie Holmes, an evolutionary biologist and virologist at the University of Sydney. He co-authored the report alongside colleagues in China.

The researchers not only looked at commonly farmed and studied animals (such as mink, muskrats, foxes and raccoon dogs), but also species including guinea pigs and deer. These are less intensely farmed but remain commonplace in smaller backyard farms across China, and have rarely been the subject of disease surveillance efforts.

“What [the study] tells you is that these species are also full of viruses, and some of these viruses are jumping species boundaries … which is a real worry,” Holmes said. “I think that this [fur] trade is a roll of the dice. We’re exposing ourselves to viruses that come from wildlife, which is an obvious route [for the] next pandemic to occur.”

The team of researchers sequenced samples from 461 animals from fur farms, mostly in northeastern China. All had died after suffering from disease. The scientists identified 125 different virus species, including 36 new pathogens.

Of the viruses detected, 39 were deemed to have high spillover potential because they were “generalists” spotted in a diversity of animals.

The team also detected seven coronaviruses, with the original hosts traced to rodents, rabbits and canines. Though none were closely related to Sars-Cov-2, a concerning new bat coronavirus was discovered. Called HKU5, it was found in the lungs and intestines of mink which had died from a pneumonia outbreak on a fur farm

Denmark culled five million farmed mink in 2020 after the animals were found to harbour a mutated strain of Covid-19. Photo / 123RF

HKU5 ‘is a red flag’

“The question always is, can we work out what sorts of viruses we should worry most about, which are most likely to emerge [in humans]? It’s very hard to say, but if viruses are able to jump big evolutionary distances, it suggests they can replicate in different cell types. That is a risk,” said Dr Holmes.

“HKU5 needs to go on a watchlist immediately. It is absolutely a red flag,” he added, calling for more rigorous surveillance of fur farms inside China and across the globe.

Linfa Wang, director of the Emerging Infectious Diseases Research Programme at Singapore’s Duke-NUS Medical School, who was not involved in the study, said he agreed that HKU5 was a red flag, but that “we need more data from lab-based infection studies to corroborate this”.

Scientists have long been concerned that mink farms could provide fertile ground for viruses to mutate, as the animals are susceptible to many of the same viruses as humans.

In autumn 2020, Denmark culled its entire population of farmed mink – some five million animals – after a Covid-19 jumped from humans to mink, mutated, and then re-infected humans with a new strain. There was also alarm in Spain in 2022, when avian influenza was reported in a mink farm in the country’s northwest.

In the latest study, scientists also found mink infected with two H5N6 bird flu viruses – while guinea pigs had H1N2 and H6N2 was found in a muskrat.


“We know from European outbreaks that these [fur] farms can extremely easily get infected from wild birds,” said Dr Thomas Peacock, a virologist and fellow at the Pirbright Institute, who was not involved in the study but has previously called for the closure of fur farms worldwide.

“China, at least in recent history, has had a far greater diversity of avian influenza viruses which are considered to have pandemic potential than Europe, so any risk from Europe is multiplied by the situation in China.”

He added that the latest research reiterates the biosecurity risks posed by fur farms, and called for greater surveillance of the pathogens spreading inside them.

“This is very much a peeking under the lid of a massive industry,” Peacock told the Daily Telegraph. “The conclusions aren’t specifically ‘virus x was found in mink or raccoon dogs and therefore is a direct singular pandemic threat’, but more this practise seems to bring lots of divergent, unusual viruses together from wildlife/farmed sources which creates a mixing pot for virus evolution and emergence.”


JiaZhen Lim, a PhD student at the University of Hong Kong’s State Key Laboratory of Emerging Infectious Diseases who was not involved in the study, agreed: “I think the key takeaway is just that there are more viruses in the farmed animals than we previously knew, and some of [them] have the cross-species infection potential.”

The study did not put the findings in the context of the origins of Covid-19 – partly because the researchers did not find pathogens closely related to Sars-Cov-2, but also because the Chinese Government has largely blocked scientists in the country from exploring or discussing anything relating to how the pandemic may have started.

The debate about how Covid-19 first jumped to humans remains ongoing. Many scientists say available evidence points towards the pathogen jumping from bats to humans via an intermediate animal in the wildlife trade; others continue to speculate it leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan.

But Wang, who played a key role in the work that traced Sars-1 back to bats, said the new research highlights the dangers of zoonotic spillover.

“These findings are significant and add further confirmation that animals are the most dangerous source of future viral disease emergence,” he told the Telegraph.

“Although the paper does not address the origin of SARS-CoV-2, it independently demonstrated that the risk of new viruses emerging from animal sources is MUCH higher than any other potential sources. Nature is much better in making new viruses of all kinds than humans.”


Holmes also said that fur farms present a “clear epidemic or pandemic risk”.

“In these locations, farmed animals act as a bridge [for diseases to spread] between wildlife to people or livestock,” he said. He added that “at the very least”, there needs to be “expanded surveillance of animals and humans working in this trade, and globally, not just in China”.

 

Social rank may determine if animals live fast, die young

Dartmouth study of macaques suggests leaders put immediate survival above longevity.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Dartmouth College

 

image: 

Macaques on Thailand’s Koram Island may engage in food-washing based on their social rank. The researchers set trays of sliced cucumber mixed with varying amounts of sand on the beach to observe how thoroughly the animals cleaned their food before eating it. They found that lower-ranked animals (pictured) first washed their cucumber slices in the ocean, often well past the point it was clean.

view more 

Credit: Amanda Tan

Anyone who has picnicked on the beach has experienced the unpleasant crunch of a sandwich with a surprise helping of sand. But for primates, the tolerance for sand may depend on whether their energy is better spent reproducing and fighting rivals or on protecting their teeth from a mouthful of grit, according to a new Dartmouth study.

Social rank may determine whether animals prioritize immediate energy consumption over long-term health, or vice versa, the researchers report in the journal eLife. They observed the eating habits of long-tailed macaques on Thailand's Koram Island and found that the dominant and lowest-ranked animals briefly rubbed sand-covered food on their fur or between their paws before devouring it, along with most of the sand, and moving on to the next morsel.

Middle-ranked monkeys, however, having more time on their paws, carried their food to the water's edge and washed it in the sea to remove the sand. These animals often expended time and energy scrubbing their snacks past the point when they were clean and would even amble down the beach on their hind legs with their front paws full of food.

Nathaniel Dominy, the study's corresponding author and the Charles Hansen Professor of Anthropology at Dartmouth, says the findings provide insight into how animals—even those in hierarchical groups—choose survival strategies based on individual needs. The study supports the disposable soma hypothesis, which proposes that animals sometimes prioritize immediate survival and reproduction over longevity, Dominy says, adding, "Delayed gratification has its limits."

That may be the case for monkeys at the top and the bottom of the social ladder, for whom life is short and hard, Dominy says. As a result, these animals consume and conserve energy whenever they can. Existing research shows that sand causes significant damage to macaque tooth enamel. But for dominant males especially, that may not be important in a life fraught with challengers.

"High-ranking males are constantly lunging at or chasing other males, behaviors that maximize their siring of offspring. So, they need to eat rapidly to make up for that energy expenditure and that's exactly what we saw them doing," Dominy says. "They just stuff food into their mouths—sand be damned—because they don't have time to walk to the water. It's the urgency of now that matters, not their teeth. To humans, it seems like a shrewd calculation."

The monkeys that wash their food might instead be playing a long game, says Amanda Tan, the study's co-corresponding author and an assistant professor of anthropology at Durham University. Tan worked on the project as a postdoctoral scholar in Dominy's research group at Dartmouth.

"We think these animals invest a lot more time in washing their food because they cannot afford to damage their teeth and compromise their longevity," Tan says. "This strategy could allow them to maximize their potential reproductive success by living longer and producing more offspring over their lifetime."

The findings also could shed light on how the wear and pitting observed in the fossilized teeth of early humans relate to social structure and access to water, Dominy says.

"What if tooth wear is telling us about rank, not food properties," Dominy asks. "If we find more variable wear on a male hominin tooth, the classic interpretation is that it's the result of a varied diet. We ought to consider the possibility that he was eating quickly and couldn't be bothered to clean his food. Or maybe he lived in an area that was historically arid. We have cause to be more open-minded about variable tooth wear."

To observe the macaques' eating habits, Tan and the study's first author, Jessica Rosien '21, arranged plastic trays on the beach that contained cucumber slices. The slices were either on their own, placed on top of sand, or buried in sand. Rosien and Tan recorded the animals every day for six weeks as they foraged for cucumbers in the trays, capturing nearly 1,300 instances of food-handling by 42 individual macaques.

The monkeys that washed their food devoted an average of five seconds to over a minute to each cucumber slice—often washing multiple slices—while the average amount of time spent just brushing sand off a slice was effectively zero, the researchers report. That time makes a difference. In lab trials with sand-coated cucumbers, the researchers found that washing removed 93% of sand and brushing removed only 75%.

The researchers determined social rank using established methods of observing how the animals interact. But the social order was not subtle, Rosien says. She recalls a low-ranking male that, rejected by his peers, spent his time sitting next to her on the beach. A high-ranked female would fearlessly challenge other macaques for their cucumbers and steal anything Rosien left unattended, including her backpack of supplies. "I loved getting to know the different monkeys' personalities over time and I definitely got a sense of the impact of social rank," she says.

Before the study, Tan worked on Koram Island for years observing how the macaques developed skills using tools through social learning. She knew that some animals washed their food while others did not. It was Dominy who wondered if there was a rank-based trade-off between getting calories quickly versus preventing tooth wear, Tan says. "To our knowledge, no one had tested the hypothesis that food-washing served as an adaptive function for removing grit," she says.

Food-washing among primates is not common, Dominy says. The Koram Island macaques were first observed doing so after the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. Their habit became a draw for tourists, who, before authorities put a stop to it, would throw fruit on the beach from boats to watch the animals wash it in the surf.

The other known instance is among the Japanese macaques on Japan's Kōjima Island. In the 1950s, researchers studying the animals lured them toward the beach with wheat and sweet potatoes to observe them more clearly.

In 1953, a young female named Imo first picked up a sandy sweet potato and washed it in a stream. Five years later, the other animals had taken up the practice, washing their food in the sea. Today, 92% of the Kōjima Island macaques wash their food.

"I love the story of Imo," Rosien says. "It shows how an individual can cause a shift in a whole population. To see such a significant advance in real time makes it easier to understand how small changes can lead to big changes."

The spread of a similar habit in two independent populations separated by 50 years and 5,000 miles speaks to the value of culture, Dominy says.

"You have to be experimental and entrepreneurial to invent a new behavior out of whole cloth, but it has to be clear enough that other individuals will understand its purpose and copy it," he says. "And they have to be smart enough to recognize when another animal has figured out something valuable. That's what culture is—seeing the value of a new behavior and adopting it."

The value for the macaques of washing their food was considered so obvious, no one had studied it before, the researchers write in their paper. "Even if something seems intuitive, it’s still important to be curious, ask questions, and test assumptions," Tan says.

"In this case," she continues, "our study provides a fuller picture of the various trade-offs that animals may juggle relative to their place in a social structure and gives us a better understanding of how that leads individuals to behave distinctly."

First author Jessica Rosien '21 recorded nearly 1,300 instances of food-handling by 42 individual macaques over six weeks. Monkeys that washed their food devoted an average of five seconds to over a minute to each cucumber slice—often washing multiple slices—while the average amount of time spent just brushing sand off a slice was effectively zero, the researchers report. The researchers determined social rank using established methods of observing how the animals interact.

Credit

Amanda Tan

Video of macaques washing and [VIDEO] | 

Video of macaques washing and brushing. (VIDEO)

Dartmouth College

Caption

Dominant macaques briefly brushed cucumber slices from the experimental setup on their fur before eating them, along with a mouthful of tooth-degrading sand. Lower-ranked macaques carried their slices to the ocean and washed them obsessively before eating. The macaques picked up their habit of washing food after the 2004 tsunami. Afterward, tourists would throw fruit from boats to watch the animals food-wash, but the government put a stop to the practice.

Credit

Jessica Rosien

Journal

eLife

DOI

10.7554/eLife.98520.1 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Food-washing monkeys recognize the law of diminishing returns

Unexpected link between grooming and physiological stress in wild baboons

Swansea University

 

image: 

A female chacma baboon grooms a male on the Cape Peninsula, South Africa,

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Credit: Charl Steenkamp

A new study from Swansea University has revealed a surprising relationship between grooming behaviour and physiological stress in wild female baboons, addressing a crucial gap in our understanding of how sociality is linked to health and fitness in animals.

Published in the journal Biology Letters, the researchers studied wild chacma baboons in South Africa. Tracking collars with motion sensors provided data on how much time each baboon spent giving or receiving grooming. The baboons’ physiological stress levels were estimated by measuring concentrations of glucocorticoid metabolites in their faeces.

Consistent with previous work, the team found that higher average grooming rates were linked to lower average stress levels, suggesting that grooming has long-term positive effects on health and fitness. However, when the researchers time-matched the high-resolution grooming and physiological stress data, they found that when baboons spent more time grooming (both giving and receiving), higher physiological stress levels followed, contrary to expectations.

This finding suggests that the long-term positive link between physiological stress and grooming is unlikely to be subserved by grooming itself because, in the short term, grooming is physiologically costly.

High-resolution grooming data from collars can now be used to study how this short-term hormone–behaviour relationship might change across environmental and social contexts and, if deployed in other social animals, confirm how widespread this phenomenon is.

Dr Charlotte Christensen, a former Swansea University PhD student now based at the University of Zurich, commented: "Our findings challenge the conventional view that grooming is purely relaxing and suggest that the immediate physiological costs may be outweighed by long-term fitness benefits."

Senior author Dr Ines Fürtbauer, head of the Behavioural Ecology & Endocrinology lab at Swansea University, emphasised the broader implications: "This study provides valuable insights into the proximate mechanisms of social bonding and stress regulation. Understanding these dynamics can help us better comprehend the health and survival strategies of social animals."

This research highlights the importance of exploring the link between social behaviours and physiological stress at different time scales, with sometimes counterintuitive results, contributing to the ongoing debate about the costs and benefits of sociality in animals.

 

---

Journal

Biology Letters

DOI

10.1098/rsbl.2024.0163 

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

More allogrooming is followed by higher physiological stress in wild female baboons

Article Publication Date

7-Aug-2024

COMPARE AND CONTRAST

Dog meat ban goes into effect in South Korea

A law banning dog meat took effect in South Korea on Wednesday, starting a countdown for businesses to exit the industry by February 2027. Numerous farms and restaurants have closed down in recent years as the practice has fallen deeply out of favor in the country.

 File Photo by Thomas Maresca/UPI | License Photo


SEOUL, Aug. 7 (UPI) -- A landmark law banning the dog meat industry in South Korea took effect Wednesday, starting the final countdown for an age-old practice that has fallen deeply out of favor in the country.

The law, passed at the beginning of the year, allows for a two-and-a-half-year grace period as dog farmers and restaurant owners transition to new businesses before a final deadline of February 2027.

At that point, penalties for violating the law will include up to three years in prison and fines of up to roughly $23,000 for those who butcher dogs. Those who breed and sell dogs for meat will face up to two years in prison and fines of $15,000.

The government will offer compensation packages to dog farmers, butchers and restaurants who submitted a plan to close or transition their businesses, South Korea's Agriculture Ministry said in a press release.

"We will actively support the necessary measures so that all industries that are subject to the closure can be carried out stably and reliably, and the complete end of dog meat consumption can be achieved by February 2027," Park Jung-hoon, an animal welfare and environmental policy officer at the ministry, said.

Some 5,600 businesses, including 1,500 farms and 2,200 restaurants and shops, were identified during a mandatory reporting period and will be eligible for support, the ministry said in May.

Dog breeding farms will receive compensation for residual value as well as closure and demolition costs. If the farms switch to other industries, the government will provide loans and funding for new facilities, specialized education, training and consultation. Restaurant owners will receive small business support packages for acquiring new supplies and altering their menus.

The law's implementation comes during the hottest period of summer in South Korea, known as Bok Nal, when dog meat is most commonly eaten in a stew called bosintang.

However, local media reports indicate that dog meat restaurants have seen a significant decline in business this year, while traditional alternatives such as black goat and eel have been booming.

"This was the first Bok Nal since the dog meat ban was passed, and already we have seen reports of reduced consumer interest in dog meat," Sangkyung Lee, Humane Society International/Korea's dog meat campaign manager, said in an emailed statement to UPI.

"The message is clear for those relative few who still eat dog meat, that the end of South Korea's dog meat era is in sight," he said.

Dog meat has been falling out of favor at a blistering pace over the past several years as pet ownership has skyrocketed.

A survey released in December by Seoul-based animal rights group Aware found that some 82% of respondents supported a ban and more than 93% said they had no intention of eating dog meat in the future.

Efforts to shut down the dog meat industry picked up momentum last year as both major political parties introduced bills and high-profile political figures including first lady Kim Keon Hee spoke out in favor of a ban.

Dog meat farmers continue to protest the new law, however, with a trade group filing a petition against the ban with the Constitutional Court in March.

Next month, the Agriculture Ministry is slated to release a plan with details on how the dog meat industry will be dismantled before the February 2027 deadline, including specific compensation packages for businesses.

Not to be sniffed at: Dolce & Gabbana launches €99 dog perfume

By AFP
August 8, 2024


Dogs have an excellent sense of smell and perfumes can distress them. - Copyright AFP Alberto PIZZOLI

No need to wrestle your dog into the bath anymore. Italian luxury fashion house Dolce & Gabbana has launched a new perfume for canine companions.

The “alcohol-free scented mist for dogs” is on sale for 99 euros and comes with a free collar — but also a warning from animal rights activists, who say it could cause pets distress.

“I am delicate, authentic, charismatic, sensitive,” the video advertising the scent begins as it shows sleek and soft Bichon Frises, Dachshunds and Chihuahuas posing on a stool.

“Cause I’m not just a dog, I’m Fefe,” it ends.

The perfume is named after the dog of the brand’s co-founder Domenico Dolce and blends “fresh and delicate notes” of ylang ylang, musk, and sandalwood.

“It’s a tender and embracing fragrance crafted for a playful beauty routine,” the company said.

But international animal rights charity PETA said “squirting (dogs) with a fragrance designed to please humans, as this is, can upset them greatly.”

Dogs “have hundreds of millions more receptors in their nostrils and can smell 10,000 to 100,000 times better than humans,” PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk said in a statement to AFP.

Perfumes sprayed on their fur “can cause them irritation and distress and interfere with their ability to detect other smells in their environment and communicate with other animals they encounter,” she said.

 

Chickens, ducks, seals and cows: A dangerous bird flu strain is knocking on Australia's door

by Michelle Wille, The Conversation

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

A dangerous strain of avian influenza (bird flu) is now wreaking havoc on every continent except Australia and the rest of Oceania. While we remain free from this strain for now, it's only a matter of time before it arrives.

Penguins in Antarctica, pelicans in Peru, sea lions in South America and dairy cows in the United States have all been hit by fast-spreading and often lethal high pathogenicity avian influenza, known as HPAI H5N1.

Indeed, avian influenza is knocking on our door right now. Just today, a case of avian influenza was reported in a return traveler, and Victorian authorities have confirmed avian influenza on an egg farm. Importantly, authorities have confirmed the virus affecting chickens is not the virus we are most worried about. Authorities are responding and we expect more information to come in the days ahead.

Researchers and biosecurity authorities are on high alert, monitoring poultry farms and testing wildlife. They could do with our help. Anyone who comes across dead or dying birds—or mammals—should report them to the Emergency Animal Disease Watch Hotline.

The rise of an animal pandemic

Avian influenza is a viral disease that infects birds, but can infect other animals.

There isn't just one strain of avian influenza found in wild birds—there's a diversity of subtypes and strains. Most cause no disease at all, and are naturally found in wild birds, including in Australia.

But others are deadly. The HPAI H5N1 clade was first detected in a goose in China, back in 1996. HPAI viruses cause high levels of sickness and death in both wild birds and poultry. It spreads rapidly and kills many of the birds—and animals—it infects.

HPAI H5N1 has been endemic in poultry in Asia for decades, driving virus evolution and the emergence of a diversity of different virus clades (a clade is similar to a variant).

In 2005 we saw the first mass mortality event in wild birds. The virus spread to Europe and Africa through both poultry trade and potentially wild birds.

In 2014 the virus again entered Europe with wild birds, with spread to North America the same year, and in 2016, to Africa.

But the real change came in 2020. The number of outbreaks in poultry and wild birds dramatically increased. In 2021, reports streamed in of mass mortality events in Europe and the virus rapidly traveled the world. The world was in the grip of a "panzootic"—a global pandemic in animals.

This particularly lethal clade of the virus jumped the Atlantic and reached North America around October 2021. A few months later, it again jumped to North America, but this time across the Pacific. In around October 2022, the virus entered South America, where it traveled an astonishing 6,000 kilometers to the southern tip of the continent in approximately six months.

The first cases were detected on the sub-Antarctic islands in October 2023 in brown skuas, scavenging birds. It's since been found in penguins, elephant seals, fur seals and Antarctic terns. By February this year, the virus was detected on the Antarctica Peninsula).

Globally, millions of wild birds are likely to have been affected. In South America alone, about 650,000 wild birds were reported dead. Many more are never reported.

This virus is threatening the survival of entire species. For example, 40% of all Peruvian pelicans in Peru have died. Scientists spent years trying to bring back Californian condors from extinction, only to watch them succumb in 2023.

It will take years to fully comprehend the impact this panzootic has had around the world. Some populations of birds and even entire species may never recover.

Scientists are especially concerned about Antarctic wildlife.

Most Antarctic species are found nowhere else on Earth. Many live in large colonies, which makes it easier for the virus to spread.

Questions remain over whether the virus will persist in Antarctica over winter and how it will spread in spring or summer.

From birds to mammals

More than 50 species of predatory and scavenging mammals have now been recorded dying from avian influenza, most likely after eating dead birds.

Particularly concerning are the deaths of 30,000 South American sea lions, 18,000 southern elephant seal pups in Argentina and dairy cows on at least 51 farms across the US.

A recent study from Uruguay shows sea lions were dying before mass bird deaths, suggesting mammal-to-mammal spread may be driving outbreaks in coastal South America.

Since the virus appeared in dairy cows in America, it has spread to herds across 10 US states. We are still learning about how the virus affects cows, but infected cows produce less milk because of infection in their udders. A recent study suggests this is because udders have receptors similar to those found in birds.

The US Food and Drug Administration states pasteurization is effective against this virus.

Globally, only 13 human cases have been confirmed due to this particular variant of HPAI H5N1, but noting that over 800 cases have been recorded since 2005. So far, one dairy worker is known to have caught the virus from cows.

The World Health Organization considers the risk of human infection to be low although the risk is higher (low to medium) for poultry farmers and other animal-exposed workers. There is no sign of human-to-human transmission.

Australia, the lucky country

To date, Australia and New Zealand have avoided HPAI H5N1. Australia has a nationally coordinated surveillance system for wild birds. This includes long-distance migratory birds such as shorebirds and seabirds.

Millions of migratory birds arrive from northern Asia each year in spring. That means August to November will be our highest risk period.

In response, in both 2022 and 2023 we collected almost 1,000 samples from recently arrived migratory birds without detecting the virus. Routine testing of dead birds by others around Australia has also come back negative.

We know migratory birds have arrived carrying other strains of avian influenza into Australia. It is only a matter of time before this HPAI H5N1 arrives.

Ducks have played a crucial role in moving the virus from place to place in the Northern Hemisphere. Studies in Asia and North America have shown some duck species are able to migrate while infected, as not all ducks die from the infection. One reason we think that Australia may have been spared so far because no ducks migrate here from Asia.

When the virus does arrive, it will likely threaten entire species. Black swans are highly susceptible. Overseas, pelicans, cormorants, penguins, gannets, terns, gulls and seals have been among the hardest hit.

This spring, please look out for sick or dead wild birds or marine mammals and report it. Surveillance could help us manage the virus.

Provided by The Conversation 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Preparedness for HPAI A(H5N1) virus varies across jurisdictions

 

In medieval England, leprosy spread between red squirrels and people, genome evidence shows

CELL PRESS

Evidence from archaeological sites in the medieval English city of Winchester shows that English red squirrels once served as an important host for Mycobacterium leprae strains that caused leprosy in people, researchers report May 3 in the journal Current Biology.

“With our genetic analysis we were able to identify red squirrels as the first ancient animal host of leprosy,” says senior author Verena Schuenemann of the University of Basel in Switzerland. “The medieval red squirrel strain we recovered is more closely related to medieval human strains from the same city than to strains isolated from infected modern red squirrels. Overall, our results point to an independent circulation of M. leprae strains between humans and red squirrels during the Medieval Period.”

“Our findings highlight the importance of involving archaeological material, in particular animal remains, into studying the long-term zoonotic potential of this disease, as only a direct comparison of ancient human and animal strains allows reconstructions of potential transmission events across time,” says Sarah Inskip of the University of Leicester, UK, a co-author on the study.

Leprosy is one of the oldest recorded diseases in human history and is still prevalent to this day in Asia, Africa, and South America. While scientists have traced the evolutionary history of the mycobacterium that causes it, they didn’t know how it may have spread to people from animals in the past beyond some hints that red squirrels in England may have served as a host.

In the new study, the researchers studied 25 human and 12 squirrel samples to look for M. leprae at two archaeological sites in Winchester. The city was well known for its leprosarium (a hospital for people with leprosy) and connections to the fur trade. In the Middle Ages, squirrel fur was widely used to trim and line garments. Many people also kept squirrels trapped wild squirrels as kits in the wild and raised them as pets.

The researchers sequenced and reconstructed four genomes representing medieval strains of M. leprae, including one from a red squirrel. An analysis to understand their relationships found that all of them belonged to a single branch on the M. leprae family tree. They also showed a close relationship between the squirrel strain and a newly constructed one isolated from the remains of a medieval person. They report that the medieval squirrel strain is more closely related to human strains from medieval Winchester than to modern squirrel strains from England, indicating that the infection was circulating between people and animals in the Middle Ages in a way that hadn’t been detected before.

“The history of leprosy is far more complex than previously thought,” Schuenemann said. “There has been no consideration of the role that animals might have played in the transmission and spread of the disease in the past, and as such, our understanding of leprosy’s history is incomplete until these hosts are considered. This finding is relevant to today as animal hosts are still not considered, even though they may be significant in terms of understanding the disease’s contemporary persistence despite attempts at eradication.” 

“In the wake of COVID-19, animal hosts are now becoming a focus of attention for understanding disease appearance and persistence,” Inskip said. “Our research shows that there is a long history of zoonotic diseases, and they have had and continue to have a big impact on us.”

###

This work was supported by the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation SERI funded ERC Consolidator Project “RESERVOIR,” the University of Zurich’s University Research Priority Program “Evolution in Action: From Genomes to Ecosystems,” and the Fondation Raoul Follereau and the Heiser Program of the New York Community Trust for Research in Leprosy.

Current Biology, Urban, Blom, and Avanzi et al.: “Ancient Mycobacterium leprae genome reveals medieval English red squirrels as animal leprosy host.” https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(24)00446-9 

Current Biology (@CurrentBiology), published by Cell Press, is a bimonthly journal that features papers across all areas of biology. Current Biology strives to foster communication across fields of biology, both by publishing important findings of general interest and through highly accessible front matter for non-specialists. Visit http://www.cell.com/current-biology. To receive Cell Press media alerts, contact press@cell.com.

 

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JOURNAL

Current Biology

DOI

10.1016/j.cub.2024.04.006 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Ancient Mycobacterium leprae genome reveals medieval English red squirrels as animal leprosy host

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

3-May-2024

Lepra in the middle ages: New insights on transmission pathways through squirrels

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF BASEL

 

IMAGE: 

A LADY PLAYS WITH A PET SQUIRREL, WEARING A BELLED COLLAR, IN THE EARLY 14TH CENTURY LUTTRELL PSALTER.

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CREDIT: BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD MS ADD. MS 42130 F. 33R

Researchers at the University of Basel and the University of Zurich have been able to prove that British squirrels carried leprosy bacteria as early as the Middle Ages. Further results revealed a link between the pathogens found in the medieval rodents and those in the local human population during that period.

Skin spots, deformed noses, ulcers: leprosy, is an infectious disease that can bring about some serious symptoms. The bacterium responsible, Mycobacterium leprae, which still infects around 200,000 people each year especially in the Global South, also has a long history in Europe. The international research group led by paleogeneticist Professor Verena Schünemann (University of Basel, formerly University of Zurich) used archaeological findings to identify red squirrels (Sciurus vulgaris) as hosts for M. leprae in medieval England. The researchers also discovered that the leprosy bacteria in medieval squirrels were closely related to those isolated from medieval human skeletons from the same region. The results were published in the journal “Current Biology”.

From squirrels to humans or vice versa?

“This similarity shows us that leprosy bacteria were probably transmitted between animals and humans at that time,” says Schünemann. However, she stresses that, based on current knowledge, it is not clear how this took place. “We don’t know whether the squirrels infected humans or whether humans were the ones to introduce the disease to the animals,” says Schünemann.

There were certainly a number of points of contact between humans and squirrels during the Middle Ages. One key aspect was fur trade, which provided the highly sought-after squirrel fur for the upper echelons of society. Especially in the 11th and 12th centuries, for example, entire coats made of squirrel fur were produced for the various royal families. Furthermore, squirrels were also kept as pets, in royal courts as well as nunneries.

Genetic analysis from 20 milligrams

For their study, the researchers focused on the city of Winchester in southern England. The material necessary for the genetic analysis originates from two different archaeological sites within the city. The human remains were extracted from the location of a former leprosarium, a care facility specifically for people suffering from leprosy. The researchers were able to examine the medieval squirrels thanks to hand and foot bones found at a former skinner’s shop. “We carried out the genetic analyses on the squirrels’ tiny hand and foot bones, which weigh between 20 and 30 milligrams. That is not a lot of material,” explains Christian Urban, first author of the study.

For the researchers, the results are particularly important for predicting leprosy in the future. Because to this day, it is not completely clear how the disease spreads. “Our One Health approach prioritizes finding out more about the role animals played in the spread of diseases in the past”, says Schünemann. “A direct comparison between ancient animal and human strains enables us to reconstruct potential transmission events over time and helps to form conclusions about the long-term zoonotic potential of the disease”, she adds.

The results are therefore relevant for today, as animals still receive very little attention as hosts of leprosy, even though they may be important for understanding the current persistence of the disease despite all attempts to eradicate it.

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JOURNAL

Current Biology

DOI

10.1016/j.cub.2024.04.006 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Cells

ARTICLE TITLE

Ancient Mycobacterium leprae genome reveals medieval English red squirrels as animal leprosy host

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

3-May-2024