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posted by janrinok on Monday November 14 2016, @10:47PM   Printer-friendly
from the a-pox-on-you-sir dept.

Leprosy has been hiding out in red squirrels in Great Britain and Ireland, though the painful and disfiguring disease hasn't been transmitted between humans there for several centuries.

The endangered bushy-tailed rodents (Sciurus vulgaris) have tested positive for leprosy-causing bacteria in several locations around the British Isles, researchers report November 11 in Science.

"It goes to show that once a disease has become extinct in humans, it could still exist in the environment if there was a suitable reservoir," says study coauthor Stewart Cole, director of the Global Health Institute at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. In this case, squirrels seem to be ideal incubators for leprosy bacteria.


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  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday November 15 2016, @05:22PM

    by bob_super (1357) on Tuesday November 15 2016, @05:22PM (#427055)

    Look, either he is the son of God and he cured leprosy, or it's a made-up story and who cares what he really did which was reported as curing leprosy?
    The people trying to scientifically explain the bible miss the point.
    (thanks for the info, though)

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