Attention Texans: Time to give up eating Possum on the Half-shelf
 

Each year only about 150 people in the U.S. are infected with leprosy, a bacterial disease that can lead to nerve damage and disfigurement. In most cases, people are infected after being exposed to saliva from an infected person, usually while traveling to parts of the world, such as Africa and Asia, where the disease is more prevalent.
But Abide's patient didn't fit this description.

A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine may provide an explanation for her case: armadillos. The leathery shelled mammals, which can be found in 10 states throughout the Southeastern U.S., are the only animals besides humans known to carry leprosy.
There have been several anecdotal reports of leprosy in humans who have handled, killed or eaten armadillos, or who may have been indirectly exposed by gardening in soil where the animals burrow, as was the case for Abide's patient.
But until now, experts haven't been able to confirm that armadillos could pass the disease to humans. The study provides the strongest evidence to date. Researchers analyzed the genomes of leprosy-causing bacteria collected from seven patients and one armadillo.

Of the 50 patients and 33 wild armadillos the researchers analyzed from the U.S., 25 patients and 28 armadillos shared a genetically identical strain of leprosy bacteria. And at least 8 of the 25 patients carrying the strain reported contact with armadillos.
However, he adds, the chance that the humans with the armadillo-specific strain were infected by some other means is about 1 in 10,000. The armadillo population in the U.S. has been estimated at 30 to 50 million, and studies suggest that, in some places, up to 15 percent have leprosy.
For now the infected animals are concentrated in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Alabama, but the armadillo population appears to be spreading north and east and could bring leprosy with it.



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Really? People eat these? Bloody hell. :o

Well there go my dinner plans! :O:

Fixed

Can't say i have tried armadillo, nor have i ever known anyone who has...

but i hear people also eat snails, spiders, roaches, snakes, horses, dogs, cats, crickets, ants, bull's testicles and anything else that can pretty much be boiled, fried, pickled or baked etc.

so armadillo wouldnt surprise me.

GR is right. That's more of an Arkansas/Louisiana/Ozarks type of thing. I don't know of any Texas rednecks that eat possum. Deer sausage, pheasant, redfish and quail, yes. Possum, no.

and quite delicious too :up:

we will add wild boar sausage with jalapeno cheese while we are at it.:smug:

Prove those humans didn't pass on the disease to the poor armadillos! :O:

i have always been warned that nearly anything reptilian carries with it a higher risk of leprosy infection.

i dont know if that is grounded in fact but i have always heard that.

Love boar sausage. Boar anything is great. So glad they're a nuisance animal that breeds like crazy!

Critter desure!
http://www.tngenweb.org/tntable/possum.htm

No where in that article does it say how many of the tiny number of total cases are caused by eating, just that eating could cause it.

Eating sushi made of dead AIDS patients could also cause HIV, I bet, too.

Dead armadillos are common in TX on the roads, etc, coming across one (kids poking it with a stick, or an adult dragging it out of the road) are not unlikely in rural areas.

Nothing surprises me. You need to go to one of the large Asian markets out here.:o

I think this thread might be so old that it could be mistaken for a leper.

Be gone with you....if I'm mistaken Neal can reverse the decision.

Really, from the soil? Oh crap! :down:

I think possibly quite literally.
:Kaleun_Sick:

?? What has possum got to do with this?:confused:

So Neal, at the subsim BBQ, that was beef right?
100% Texas longhorn right?

Longhorn is beef, meaning a cow, right?

I'd hate to find on the internetz that "longhorn" is the Texas word for possum.:o

I mean, who ranches possums, that's just crazy, even for Texas.:doh:
Now I can see Arkansas doing that.

As far as I can recollect that BBQ we had at Neals ranch was 100% pure Stevens quality beef....yippee ki yay :sunny:

Lep pracccy I' mmm not quite the man Iiii use to beeee,,,:woot: because all my skin is fallen off of mmeeeee oooh oh why do I have lep pracy,,, Sy fo liss all it took was one simple kiss now it's hard to ooooops sorry got a little off topic.

Ya shouldn't attempt to speak after your lips fall off. Armadillos are not Gerbils an don't belong near any orifice.:03::D