{"id":411669,"date":"2025-09-09T23:33:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-09T23:33:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/411669\/"},"modified":"2025-09-09T23:33:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T23:33:10","slug":"koala-chlamydia-australia-approves-world-first-vaccine-to-curb-killer-epidemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/411669\/","title":{"rendered":"Koala chlamydia: Australia approves world-first vaccine to curb killer epidemic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Both male and female koalas can contract the disease, which is a different strain to the one found in humans, while joeys can catch it through feeding in their mother&#8217;s pouch.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Koalas infected with chlamydia are usually given antibiotics but the treatment means they cannot digest eucalyptus leaves &#8211; their only food source &#8211; leading to starvation and sometimes death.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The much-loved national icon has faced increasing threats to its wild populations across much of eastern Australia in recent decades from factors including land clearing, bushfires, drought and urbanisation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But chlamydia has been the biggest killer and claimed thousands of koalas, with some estimating that only 50,000 remain in the wild.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The vaccine&#8217;s approval is based on a decade-long study of clinical trials, which the university described as the largest and longest ever study of wild koalas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Both male and female koalas can contract the disease, which is a different strain to the one found&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":411670,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[105,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-411669","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115176957958370633","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}