A research team from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, recently published a study discovering a bacterium linked to Chimpanzees’ death in Sierra Leone with the concern of the bacteria spreading to humans.

Humans and Chimpanzees share around 99% of their genomes, with part of that being shared gut bacteria. At the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary, 56 chimpanzees died from this mysterious illness between 2005-2018. The symptoms seem to not be subtle because of this disease. It causes both gastrointestinal and neurological symptoms.
“The chimpanzees would stagger and stumble, vomit, and have diarrhea,” Tony Goldberg, the lead researcher, told Science.

“Sometimes they’d go to bed healthy and be dead in the morning.”
The newfound disease caused by this bacterium has been named Epizootic Neurologic and Gastroenteric Syndrome (ENGS).

Although there are still a lot of unknown variables, so far, the disease has a 100% fatality rate. The veterinarians at Tacugama try to treat the sick chimpanzees with antacids, anticonvulsives, and antibiotics but the animals have yet to recover once infected.

“There are very few pathogens that infect chimpanzees without infecting humans and very few pathogens that infect humans without infecting chimpanzees,” Goldberg said.

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