Scratching at scabies risks heart disease
Controlling skin infections in Aboriginal communities will cut high rates of heart and kidney disease, Australian researchers believe.
This is because particular types of heart and kidney disease in indigenous Australians have been linked to a skin infection associated with the scabies mite.
"We have been accumulating evidence that there is a clear link between the skin infection and these chronic diseases," the research centre's Associate Professor Jonathan Carapetis said.
The streptococcus bacterium is usually linked to throat infections. But it is also found on the skin and can cause infections, commonly known as school sores.
Strep skin infections are rife in some Aboriginal communities and the most common reason for children visiting a clinic.
Carapetis said scratching scabies bites enabled the bacterium to enter the skin and cause infection. This in turn can result in rheumatic fever, a disease rare in affluent societies but common in developing countries.
Rheumatic fever sets off a chain of health consequences, sparking an immune reaction that can result in a type of kidney damage known as glomerulonephritis and rheumatic heart disease.
Indigenous Australians have the highest rates of rheumatic fever in the world, with one in five people in some communities affected.
"Rheumatic heart disease and kidney failure due to the strep bug are big problems in Aboriginal communities and we've never had a really effective way of preventing these," Carapetis said.
"We believe the new evidence gives us an avenue for prevention."
A multi-million dollar screening and treatment program will be launched today throughout the East Arnhem region.
Meanwhile, Carapetis said work at the Menzies School of Health Research in Darwin had dispelled the belief that mangey dogs spread skin infections in indigenous communities.
It was previously thought that the mites that caused mange also caused human scabies.
"Testing of the DNA of the mites which cause dog mange and the mites which cause human scabies has shown that they are a different species," he said.