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Treponema pallidum Infection in Primates: Clinical Manifestations, Epidemiology, and Evolution of a Stealthy Pathogen

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Primates, Pathogens, and Evolution

Part of the book series: Developments in Primatology: Progress and Prospects ((DIPR))

Abstract

In humans, subspecies of the bacterium Treponema pallidum cause syphilis as well as the nonsexually transmitted diseases yaws and bejel. The origin of T. pallidum infection in humans is controversial, and as a result attention has focused on the presence of this pathogen in wild nonhuman primates. It has been known for some time that Old World nonhuman primates, including gorillas, chimpanzees, baboons, and patas monkeys, are infected with T. pallidum in the wild. However, the bulk of studies on treponemal disease in wild apes and monkeys were performed in the 1960s and 1970s and focused on animals captured in West Africa. Due to the absence of relevant molecular biological assays during this time period, virtually all studies relied on the serological screening of animals. In this chapter, we describe the findings of this decades-old body of research, as well as more recent results which utilize DNA-based methods to demonstrate the presence of treponemal disease in East African baboons. We discuss the distribution and protean clinical manifestations of T. pallidum infection in wild nonhuman primates, host factors involved in human and simian infections, the genetic relationship between human and nonhuman primate strains, and implications for understanding the evolution of this pathogen and its primate hosts.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Sequences from the 16S ribosomal subunit (2nd operon) available from GenBank were obtained and aligned in ClustalX. They included the subsp. pallidum strains Dallas-1 (NC016844.1), Chicago (CP001752.1), Nichols (NC000919.1), Street Strain 14 (NC010741.1), and Mexico A (HM585252.1), the subsp. pertenue strains CDC-2 (NC016848.1), Gauthier (NC016843.1), Samoa D (NC016842.1), and the Fribourg-Blanc strain (HM165231.1).

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Acknowledgments

We thank the Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute (TAWIRI), Tanzania National Parks (TANAPA), the Lake Manyara National Park headquarter staff, the NCA authority, and the Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology for making our study of T. pallidum infection in baboons possible. We also thank Jim Thomas for the use of his laboratory, Worldwide Primates and the Buckshire Corporation for providing samples, and Columbia University’s Training Program in Cancer-Related Population Sciences (5-R25-CA 094061), the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholars program, NSF (Grant 0622399), the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Predoctoral Fellowship program for their financial support.

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  1. Environmental Health Sciences, Columbia University, New York, NY, 10032, USA

    Kristin N. Harper

  2. Pathology Unit, German Primate Center, Leibniz-Institute for Primate Research, Goettingen, Germany

    Sascha Knauf

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Correspondence to Kristin N. Harper .

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  1. Department of Pediatrics, CHU Saint-Justine Research Center, University of Montreal, Montreal, QC, Canada

    Jessica F. Brinkworth

  2. Department of Anthropology, Queens College, City University of New Y, New York, New York, USA

    Kate Pechenkina

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© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Harper, K.N., Knauf, S. (2013). Treponema pallidum Infection in Primates: Clinical Manifestations, Epidemiology, and Evolution of a Stealthy Pathogen. In: Brinkworth, J., Pechenkina, K. (eds) Primates, Pathogens, and Evolution. Developments in Primatology: Progress and Prospects. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7181-3_7

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