2024-02-26 16:03:39
The variant is now available for more detailed testing. Leptospirosis is a rare but sometimes fatal disease in Austria.
Bacteria of the genus “Leptospira” infect humans and other animals worldwide. They are most common in the tropics, but climate change could mean they are increasingly affecting countries in temperate latitudes such as Austria. There is also a native, previously anonymous strain of Leptospira. The Viennese epidemiologist Amélie Desvars-Larrive identified it with colleagues, cultivated it in the laboratory and made it available for more precise tests, she reports in the journal “Scientific Reports”.
Leptospira have a “helically wound” shape and are found in rats, mice, cattle, pigs and dogs. People become infected when they come into contact with urine from infected animals and the bacteria enter through small breaks in the skin or mucous membranes, or if they drink water contaminated with it. The pathogens can then cause fever, meningitis, conjunctival bleeding, liver and kidney damage and multi-organ failure.
Up to 70 people in Austria suffer from it every year
The disease is treated with antibiotics. According to the Agency for Health and Food Safety (AGES), it occurs rarely but regularly in Austria. Ten to 70 people fall ill here every year. Sometimes there are deaths.
In cattle, leptospirosis sometimes leads to fertility problems and reduced milk production, says Desvars-Larrive, who works at the Complexity Science Hub (CSH) in Vienna and the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna.
Rats are common carriers of the disease
On farms, prevention can be achieved by keeping rats and other rodents away from them. These are a large reservoir for the pathogens. In an earlier study, she and colleagues showed, for example, that a quarter of all rats in Vienna carry such bacteria.
Similar to SARS-CoV-2, a Leptospira infection can be detected and detected using PCR (polymerase chain reaction) or antibody tests. Antibody tests in particular are more accurate if you know and take into account the local variants (serogroups), Desvars-Larrive explained to the APA: “The gold standard method for detecting the variant with which a person or animal is infected is called a microagglutination test.” To do this, you need living cultures of different Leptospira serogroups. They are mixed individually with the patient’s serum (the liquid part of the blood). If the antibody has formed against the microbes, they visibly clump together (agglutinate) and the test is “positive”.
Bacteria were bred for the first time in an Austrian laboratory
Until now, the local Austrian Leptospira strains were unrecognized and had not yet been bred in the laboratory. “We have now been able to close this very practice-relevant research gap,” says Desvars-Larrive. For preventative measures against further infections of humans and animals, it is helpful to know the serogroup that is currently causing illnesses. Then the animal source can be determined more easily, and the existing vaccines are also “serogroup-specific,” she explained. There are vaccinations in Austria for dogs and pigs, but not for cattle and people.
Five of 410 cattle tested had the bacteria
To find the locally circulating Leptospira serogroup, researchers took samples from 410 cattle that research showed were at increased risk of infection. “Five of them tested positive for Leptospira,” reports Desvars-Larrive in a CSH release: “The bacterium was successfully isolated, cultivated and precisely identified three times.”
“Cattle on Austrian farms can also carry the Leptospira bacterium and be a source of infections,” explains the epidemiologist. The domestic variant is called “Leptospira borgpetersenii serogroup Sejroe serovar Hardjobovis”. It is extremely adaptable and is found in many places in domestic and wild animals. This increases the risk of “zoonotic” transmission between humans and other animals, says Desvars-Larrive.
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