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This was in a medical journal publication. I have always heard, even from some doctors who are hunters, that it is a different strain of leprocy that cannot be transferred to humans. i don't feel the need to touch them after i kill them though. We used to catch them when i was a kid though and I'm fine.
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Yeah, it was a medical journal, but nothing has changed. This study is only a DNA confirmational study of that which was already documented to occur. The strain in question was known to be zoonotic to humans.
The reason you are fine is because 95% of the human population is immune to leprosy, not because it is a different strain.
There was a neat article back in another medical journal in 1983 noting the presence of leprosy in armadillo handlers.
Lumpkin et al., 1983 Leprosy in five armadillo handlers.
Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, 9:899-903.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6643788
Here is a later study from 2008, from a medical journal, noting leprosy in folks whose only exposure to it has been through armadillos.
http://journals.lww.com/smajournalon...ocytic.14.aspx