Scientists at the University of Michigan and their colleagues used luminescent fluorescent gels to test the potential effectiveness of vaccines to control rabies and other diseases in wild bats.
The study, led by researchers from the University of Michigan and the University of Glasgow, is scheduled to be published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution on June 5438+065438+1October 08. It is found that a labor-saving vaccination program can greatly reduce the spread of rabies in wild blood-sucking bats, thus reducing the fatal infection of people and livestock at risk.
This gel contains a fluorescent tracer dye Rhodamine B, which was used in three wild vampire bat populations in Peru, where the in-situ transmission of rabies vaccine in bats was simulated. This vaccine is orally or topically applied, and then spread among bats through oral contact during transformation. Studies have shown that in the laboratory, every vaccinated individual can protect many bats from rabies, but their transmission level in wild bats is still unknown.
When this gel is ingested by mutually modified bats, it will generate fluorescence in bat hair follicles, and then the hair samples collected by scientists will be monitored by fluorescence microscope.
This study shows that due to the transfer between bats, the in-situ rabies vaccine will protect 2.6 bats for every bat vaccinated, while the traditional non-proliferation vaccine will protect 1 bat.
Kevin Bakker of UM, the lead author of this study, said: We provide the first evidence that bat vaccine can reduce rabies in humans and livestock.
The researchers used mathematical models to show that the observed level of vaccine metastasis will reduce the possibility, scale and duration of rabies outbreak, even at a low level but at the actual level of vaccine deployment.
These models further show that the diffusible vaccine will control rabies more effectively than the current policy of killing bats with toxic gel transmitted through the same contact and modification route.
Barker, a postdoctoral researcher at Umm Statistics Bureau, said: We have proved why vampire bats that have been extinct for more than 40 years have failed to control the disease in Latin America.
Our mathematical model shows that in order to reduce rabies more effectively than vaccines, bats must be effectively eliminated. Our field research shows that this level of elimination is impossible in real-world battles.
Blood-sucking bat rabies is a fatal viral disease, which spreads all over Latin America. In places where vampire bats usually feed on human blood, rabies is estimated to be 960 deaths per100000 people, and the mortality rate of livestock causes losses of more than 50 million US dollars every year, especially affecting poor rural communities.
The existing management strategies can not reduce the burden of rabies, because the high cost and traffic in remote areas limit the use of protective vaccines for people and livestock. Another strategy is to poison bats to reduce their numbers, which is controversial and has achieved different results in controlling rabies.
Despite decades of efforts to reduce the burden, vampire bat rabies still has a serious medical and agricultural impact in North America, Central America and South America. Our research results show that oral rabies vaccine transferred from bat to bat can improve the population immunity to 2.6. Daniel Strick, a senior author of this paper and a senior researcher at the Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine of Glasgow University and the MRC- Glasgow University Center, said: It is used for virus research.
Until recently, it seemed unthinkable to control the diseases of recessive animals such as wild bats. Our findings reveal the exciting potential of using a new generation of transmissible vaccine technology to protect human and animal health by fighting diseases of wild animal hosts.
Barker said that because rabies depends on vampire bats moving between the two colonies, the strategic shift from poisoning to vaccination will improve immunity and may lead to a sharp decline in rabies throughout Latin America. Bakker received his Ph.D. from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Michigan. 20 17, and then completed an eight-month postdoctoral research at Glasgow university. He is now a researcher in the Statistics Department of the National Institutes of Health.
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