Mycobacterium leprae strain:Zoonotic Raw sequence reads. Mycobacterium leprae strain:Zoonotic

In the southern United States, nine-banded armadillos harbor a natural infection with Mycobacterium leprae and are implicated in zoonotic transmission of leprosy by perpetuating a strain 3I-2-v1. In present study, we screened 645 armadillos for M. leprae DNA and antibodies from 8 locations not known to harbor enzootic leprosy previously. We found M. leprae-infected armadillos in each of these locations, with 16.4% of the animals exhibiting serological/PCR evidence for infection. M. leprae strains from 52 patients from the same region were compared with those identified in 45 armadillos using SNP-VNTR genotyping/genome-sequencing. This revealed 3I-2-v1 strain among 35 animals and a newly identified strain 3I-2-v15 among 7 animals. Patients exhibited 31 different strain-types, but 22/52 were infected with the two above-mentioned strains associated with armadillos indicating that the geographic range of infection is expanding. Also, the emergence of additional M. leprae strain-types associated with zoonotic leprosy bears immediate public health significance.