They're cute. They're often roadkill. Some gourmands say they're tasty, whether baked or barbecued.
Now Louisiana researchers have learned something else about nine-banded armadillos. "A preponderance of evidence shows that people get leprosy from these animals," said Richard W. Truman, director of microbiology at the National Hansen's Disease Program in Baton Rouge and lead author of a paper detailing the discovery in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Until now, scientists believed that leprosy was passed only from human to human.
Every year, about 100 to 150 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with the malady, which is also known as Hansen's disease.
Though many have traveled to countries where the disease is relatively common, as many as a third don't know where they picked it up.
Most of those cases are in Texas and Louisiana, where leprosy-infected armadillos live too.
http://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-leprosy-armadillos-20110428,0,7639041.story
