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Gorillas in Central Africa have been felled by Ebola over the past two years. Chimps are also affected by Ebola.
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Anthrax Outbreak in Wild Chimps Threatens Humans
21 July 2004
Anthrax outbreak kills wild chimps
Helen Pilcher
Illegal trade could spread disease to humans.
Original Article
Anthrax has killed at least six wild chimpanzees in the tropical rainforest of the Ivory Coast - the first time the disease has been seen in these animals and in this type of habitat. As well as threatening great ape populations, the discovery raises fears that the disease could spread to humans through the illegal trade in bushmeat.
Researchers studying chimps (Pan troglodytes verus) in the Ta� National Park saw 8 animals disappear or die suddenly between October 2001 and June 2002. Healthy animals became weak, vomited and died within a few hours of symptoms appearing.
Post mortems revealed that the animals suffered massive internal bleeding, suggesting bacterial infection as a possible cause. Genetic analysis of 6 animals showed Bacillus anthracis, the bacterium that causes anthrax, to be the culprit. The results are reported in this week's Nature.
"Finding anthrax was a big surprise," says Georg Pauli from the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin, Germany, who studied the primates. There have been no previous reports of anthrax in wild chimps, and the bacterium, which also infects humans and hooved animals, has not been found in Africa's tropical rainforests before.
Spread of infection
"It's a serious problem for chimps," says conservationist Peter Walsh from Princeton University, New Jersey. Africa's 100,000 to 200,000 remaining wild chimps are already under threat from commercial hunting, habitat destruction and the Ebola virus. It is not clear whether the anthrax outbreak is a one-off, or if there are likely to be further incidents.
The disease could also spread to humans. The bacterium forms hardy spores that can be breathed in, consumed in contaminated food and water, or can infect the skin through human-to-animal contact.
Although illegal, the bushmeat trade continues to thrive, so hunters could catch anthrax when handling infected corpses.
Passing livestock
It is unclear how the chimps became infected, making it hard for officials to instigate prevention and containment strategies.
One possibility is that the disease was imported from neighbouring countries, where anthrax is endemic. Deforestation means that cattle transport routes from Mali and Burkina Faso now pass close to the Ta� National Park border, so the chimps may have caught the disease from passing livestock. "This is a reasonable suspicion," says Walsh.
Other suggestions are less likely, but still possible. The chimps may have ingested spores from contaminated water. But drinking sources are shared by many species, and no other animals have so far been diagnosed with the infection.
Or the chimps may have dined on contaminated antelope. But anthrax has never been confirmed in Ivory Coast antelope, and chimps have never been seen eating the animals.
Our lack of knowledge highlights the need for improved health surveillance of wild chimps, says Pauli. In response to the anthrax finding, he is helping to establish a survey to assess the disease status of the world's great apes.
Nature 430, 451 - 452 (22 July 2004); doi:10.1038/nature02722
Anthrax kills wild chimpanzees in a tropical rainforest
FABIAN H. LEENDERTZ(1),(2),(3), HEINZ ELLERBROK(2), CHRISTOPHE BOESCH(1), EMMANUEL COUACY-HYMANN(4), KERSTIN M�TZ-RENSING(5), REGINE HAKENBECK(6), CARINA BERGMANN(6), POLA ABAZA(1),(2), SANDRA JUNGLEN(1),(2), YASMIN MOEBIUS(1), LINDA VIGILANT(1), PIERRE FORMENTY(7) & GEORG PAULI(2)
(1) Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany
(2) Zentrum f�r biologische Sicherheit, Robert Koch-Institut, Nordufer 20, D-13353 Berlin, Germany
(3) Institute for Parasitology and International Animal Health, Free University of Berlin, K�nigsweg 67, D-14163 Berlin, Germany
(4) Lanada/Lcpa, Bingerville, Ivory Coast
(5) German Primate Center, Kellnerweg 4, D-37077 G�ttingen, Germany
(6) Department of Microbiology, University of Kaiserslautern, Paul-Ehrlich-Strae, D-67663 Kaiserslautern, Germany
(7) Ebola Ta� Forest Project, World Health Organisation, WHO Office, Abidjan, Ivory Coast
Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to H.E. (ellerbrokh @rki .de).
Infectious disease has joined habitat loss and hunting as threats to the survival of the remaining wild populations of great apes. Nevertheless, relatively little is known about the causative agents. We investigated an unusually high number of sudden deaths observed over nine months in three communities of wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) in the Ta� National Park, Ivory Coast. Here we report combined pathological, cytological and molecular investigations that identified Bacillus anthracis as the cause of death for at least six individuals. We show that anthrax can be found in wild non-human primates living in a tropical rainforest, a habitat not previously known to harbour B. anthracis. Anthrax is an acute disease that infects ruminants, but other mammals, including humans, can be infected through contacting or inhaling high doses of spores or by consuming meat from infected animals. Respiratory and gastrointestinal anthrax are characterized by rapid onset, fever, septicaemia and a high fatality rate without early antibiotic treatment. Our results suggest that epidemic diseases represent substantial threats to wild ape populations, and through bushmeat consumption also pose a hazard to human health.
Copyright 2004, Nature Publishing Group
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