Thursday 23 August 2012

Sanctuary Chimps Show High Rates of Drug-Resistant Staph

ScienceDaily (Aug. 21, 2012) — Chimpanzees from African sanctuaries carry drug-resistant, human-associated strains of the bacteria Staphlyococcus aureus, a pathogen that the infected chimpanzees could spread to endangered wild ape populations if they were reintroduced to their natural habitat, a new study shows.

The study by veterinarians, microbiologists and ecologists was the first to apply the same modern sequencing technology of bacterial genomes used in hospitals to track the transmission of staph from humans to African wildlife. The results were published August 21 by the American Journal of Primatology.

Drug-resistant staph was found in 36 chimpanzees, or 58 percent of those tested at two sanctuaries, located in Uganda and Zambia. Nearly 10 percent of the staph cases in chimpanzees showed signs of multi-drug resistance, the most dangerous and hard to cure form of the pathogen.

"One of the biggest threats to wild apes is the risk of acquiring novel pathogens from humans," says study co-author Thomas Gillespie, a primate disease ecologist at Emory University.

Read on:
  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120821162511.htm

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