Salt can halt heart attacks for frogs with infectious disease Home stretch: The research team will now team up with scientists in Ecuador. If the salt strategy works as well there, it could help declining frogs everywhere.
Pass the salt: The n Green and Golden bell frog, considered to be under high risk of extinction in NSW, was selected for the University of Newcastle study.
Change: The Green and Golden Bell frog had a 70 per cent increased survival rate when moved into habitats where small amounts of salt were added to the water.
TweetFacebookSIMPLE poolsalt may be the answer to a “devastating” disease driving more than 100 species of frogs to extinction, a University of Newcastle researcher says.
Dr Simon Clulowled a study looking into a treatment for thehighly infectious chytrid disease, which has sentmore than a third of the world’s frog species into decline.
“Chytrid disease is incredibly prevalent world-wide,” he said. “It has devastated frog populations in , the Americas, Africa and Europe.
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“Chytrid is probably the main driver of current frog extinctions and until now we haven’t been able to develop effective controls, especially for wild populations.”
Dr Clulow said thetreatment requiredthe use of pool salt, which meant it could be implemented quickly and easily to change the “worrying trajectory” for many frog species.
Chytrid isa type of fungus that transmits infection by releasing small“zoospores” thatattackthe keratin in a frog’s skin. This disrupts the flow of electrolytes, and effectively gives frogsa heart attack.
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