Leptospira in Queen Elizabeth National Park

Greetings!

As I am wrapping up data collection at the first field location, I figured I would write a little about my IRES project. As I mentioned in my first post, my project completely changed about a week before I arrived in Uganda. I was originally going to collect mosquitoes from different areas around Queen Elizabeth National Park and morphologically identify them, but the funding for that project was delayed a few months so I had to move to a different project.

While I’m in Uganda I am coordinating with an organization called One Health Central and Eastern Africa (OHCEA). They are a group that supports local masters and PhD students who have projects that relate to interactions between humans, livestock, and wildlife. And my new project is no exception.

For my project, I am working with Erick, a graduate student, and Stallon, an OHCEA research assistant, and together we are collecting wild rodents found on the outskirts of Queen Elizabeth and just within local communities. Queen Elizabeth is a very large park and there are many communities that live just outside of the park boundary. Due to this close interface, there are many human-livestock-wildlife interactions, and often times these close relationships cause problems for all populations involved.

We are collecting rodents in traps, dissecting them, and collecting blood, heart, liver, spleen, kidney, and leg muscle samples. We hope to collect a sample size of at least 100 rodents (we have already caught 59 at our first location!). These samples will be taken back to a lab where they will be screened via PCR for bacteria called Leptospira. Rodents are a common reservoir for Leptospira, and the bacteria can easily be transmitted to livestock and humans to cause a disease known as leptospirosis. The cross-species transmission occurs quite easily in these areas. First, a rat carrying Leptospira urinates on the grass. A community member lets his goat out to graze on the grass. The goat eats the grass on which the rat urinated. The goat is now carrying Leptospira. The community member slaughters his goat, cooks it but doesn’t use hot enough water to kill the bacteria (a very sad but common scenario in these villages), and feeds it to his family. Now his family has leptospirosis.

One of the leading causes of mortality in Uganda, and even all of Africa, is malaria. As soon as people start to exhibit signs of malaria, they go straight to the pharmacy and get malaria medication. Families like the one mentioned in the example above, go get treated for malaria. Interestingly enough, however, malaria and leptospirosis exhibit the same symptoms: head ache, fever, joint pain, and an upset stomach. This means that this family will get medication for the wrong disease, will continue to not feel well, and some members could even die as a result of misdiagnosis. Leptospirosis is a neglected tropical disease, and this needs to change. The lack of information surrounding this disease and its modes of transmission are leading a very interesting summer project!

Unfortunately the molecular lab work will be done in late August, way past my stay, but I am looking forward to working on the project’s preliminary steps and receiving the lab work results from Erick later in the year.

Later,

Leo R.