Tuberculosis Threatens Amazon Indians
11/24/97
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Headline: Tuberculosis Threatens Amazon Indians
Source: UPI Science News
Date: 11/24/97
Author: Mara Bovsun in New York
Copyright 1997 by United Press International All rights reserved
WASHINGTON, Nov. 24 (UPI) _ Scientists say a tuberculosis epidemic could
wipe out the Yanomami, the legendary warrior Indians of the Amazon, because
their immune systems are not trained to do battle with the bacteria.
The researchers say the Yanomami appear to be ``at the beginning of a
severe epidemic,'' with levels of active TB that are 100 times higher than
other Brazilians, and vaccines don't seem to help.
The scientists, from Albert Einstein College of Medicine, in New York, say,
the Yanomami had no contact with the germ until the 1980s, when a gold rush
brought tens of thousands of fortune seekers, and deadly germs, into the
rain forest. This is 100 times higher than other Brazilians.
Most of the Indians studied had been given TB vaccines, which did not seem
to help.
In the study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
researchers found a high prevalence of active tuberculosis, about 6.4
percent, in the Yanomami, about 100 times higher than other Brazilians.
The disease also appears to hit the Yanomami harder than it does
populations with centuries of TB exposure.
Dr. Alexandra Sousa, from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, says
``you would think it was a different, more virulent pathogen, but it's
really a more susceptible host.''
Sousa, the study's lead researcher, says the immune systems of the Indians
may be like those of Europeans from about 600 years ago, before TB wiped
out susceptible people and gave rise to populations with better resistance.
Sousa says, ``We are seeing what we think is a form that was common in the
Middle Ages.''
The Yanomami, she says, are possibly the ``last population on Earth''
isolated from TB.
Sousa says there are only about 9,000 Yanomami in Brazil, and another group
of similar size in Venzuela.