Ancient Plasmodium genomes shed light on the history of human malaria

Malaria-causing protozoa of the genus Plasmodium have exerted one of the strongest selective pressures on the human genome, and resistance alleles provide biomolecular footprints that outline the historical reach of these species1. Nevertheless, debate persists over when and how malaria parasites emerged as human pathogens and spread around the globe1,2. To address these questions, we generated high-coverage ancient mitochondrial and nuclear genome-wide data from P. falciparum, P. vivax and P. malariae from 16 countries spanning around 5,500 years of human history. We identified P. vivax and P. falciparum across geographically disparate regions of Eurasia from as early as the fourth and first millennia bce, respectively; for P. vivax, this evidence pre-dates textual references by several millennia3. Genomic analysis supports distinct disease histories for P. falciparum and P. vivax in the Americas: similarities between now-eliminated European and peri-contact South American strains indicate that European colonizers were the source of American P. vivax, whereas the trans-Atlantic slave trade probably introduced P. falciparum into the Americas. Our data underscore the role of cross-cultural contacts in the dissemination of malaria, laying the biomolecular foundation for future palaeo-epidemiological research into the impact of Plasmodium parasites on human history. Finally, our unexpected discovery of P. falciparum in the high-altitude Himalayas provides a rare case study in which individual mobility can be inferred from infection status, adding to our knowledge of cross-cultural connectivity in the region nearly three millennia ago.This project was funded by the National Science Foundation, grants BCS-2141896 and BCS-1528698; the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme, grants 851511-MICROSCOPE (to S. Schiffels), 771234-PALEoRIDER (to W.H.) and starting grant 805268-CoDisEASe (to K.I.B.); and the ERC starting grant Waves ERC758967 (supporting K. Nägele and S.C.). We thank the Max Planck-Harvard Research Center for the Archaeoscience of the Ancient Mediterranean for supporting M. Michel, E. Skourtanioti, A.M., R.A.B., L.C.B., G.U.N., N.S., V.V.-M., M. McCormick, P.W.S., C.W. and J.K.; the Kone Foundation for supporting E.K.G. and A.S.; and the Faculty of Medicine and the Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences at the University of Helsinki for grants to E.K.G. A.S. thanks the Magnus Ehrnrooth Foundation, the Sigrid Jusélius Foundation, the Finnish Cultural Foundation, the Academy of Finland, the Life and Health Medical Foundation and the Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters. M.C.B. acknowledges funding from: research project PID2020-116196GB-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033; the Spanish Ministry of Culture; the Chiang Ching Kuo Foundation; Fundación Palarq; the EU FP7 Marie Curie Zukunftskolleg Incoming Fellowship Programme, University of Konstanz (grant 291784); STAR2-Santander Universidades and Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports; and CEI 2015 project Cantabria Campus Internacional. M.E. received support from the Czech Academy of Sciences award Praemium Academiae and project RVO 67985912 of the Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague. This work has been funded within project PID2020-115956GB-I00 ‘Origen y conformación del Bronce Valenciano’, granted by the Ministry of Science and Innovation of the Government of Spain, and grants from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (MZI187236), Research Nova Scotia (RNS 2023-2565) and The Center for Health Research in Developing Countries. D.K. is the Canada research chair in translational vaccinology and inflammation. R.L.K. acknowledges support from a 2019 University of Otago research grant (Human health and adaptation along Silk Roads, a bioarchaeological investigation of a medieval Uzbek cemetery). P.O. thanks the Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation, the Finnish Cultural Foundation and the Academy of Finland. S. Peltola received support from the Emil Aaltonen Foundation and the Ella and Georg Ehrnrooth Foundation. D.C.S.-G. thanks the Generalitat Valenciana (CIDEGENT/2019/061). E.W.K. acknowledges support from the DEEPDEAD project, HERA-UP, CRP (15.055) and the Horizon 2020 programme (grant 649307). M. Spyrou thanks the Elite program for postdocs of the Baden-Württemberg Stiftung. Open access funding provided by Max Planck Society

Anthropologische Analyse. Archaeologia Austriaca|Archaeologia Austriaca Band 97-98/2014|

Aus dem völkerwanderungszeitlichen Fundareal von Gobelsburg wurden menschliche Skelettreste von insgesamt sieben Individuen geborgen, welche aufgrund ihres morphologischen Merkmalsspektrums drei erwachsenen Männern, einer Frau und drei Kindern zugeordnet werden können. Neben der Dokumentation der individuellen Parameter und der Erfassung ausgewählter metrischer und epigenetischer, kleinräumiger anatomischer Merkmale, lag der Schwerpunkt der anthropologischen Analyse auf der Erfassung der krankhaften und degenerativen Veränderungen sowie etwaiger Verletzungsspuren. Aus dem Zustandsbild der Zähne und des Zahnhalteapparates, insbesondere der massiven Zahnsteinbehaftung und der Reduktion des Alveolarkamms kann auf eine eher proteinlastige, vitaminarme Ernährung geschlossen werden. Veränderungen an den Langknochen im Sinne von periostalen Knochenneubildungen (Periostitis) und porotischen Strukturen im Bereich des Schädeldaches (porotische Hyperostose) gelten als Mangelsymptome und implizieren ebenfalls Vitaminund Eisenmangel. Diese Veränderungen treten bei den Männern aus Grab 1 und Grab 4 am deutlichsten in Erscheinung. Zudem weisen diese beiden Männer eine sogenannte Reiterfacette (Gelenkflächenerweiterung am Oberschenkelkopf) auf, welche als Folge einer regelmäßigen Belastung und Beugung im Hüftgelenk gelten kann. Als Symptome bzw. Manifestationen erhöhter körperlicher Beanspruchung können auch die degenerativen Wirbelsäulenveränderungen sowie die massiven Knochenumbildungen im Bereich der Muskelansatz- und Muskelursprungsflächen (Enthesopathien) an den postcranialen Skelettelementen gedeutet werden. Die Art und Häufigkeit spezifischer (seltener), genetisch verankerter Zahn- und anderer Merkmale, lässt eine verwandtschaftliche Beziehung der männlichen Individuen und des aus Grab 3 geborgenen 4–6 jährigen Kindes als wahrscheinlich erscheinen

Missing lactase persistence in Late Iron Age Central Europe

Being able to digest milk sugar beyond the age of weaning is a rather new trait in humans. The calculated age of the responsible mutations largely coincides with the introduction of dairy farming. Recent European populations exhibit a gradient of high levels of lactose tolerance in the north and lower numbers in the south. Lactase persistence is believed to have co-evolved with farming or livestock keeping as a selective advantage. Palaeogenetic data of prehistoric individuals, however, have so far not provided any clear evidence that the spread of the lactase persistence mutation predates the Roman period, while persistence increases throughout the Middle Ages. In contrast, evidence of dairy processing reaches back to the introduction of farming in the Neolithic. In this paper, we investigate lactase persistence in the La Tène period of the European Iron Age. 39 individuals from Austria, France, Hungary and Switzerland have been successfully genotyped for the two single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) 13910C/T and 22018G/A, which are associated with lactose tolerance. None of those individuals carries the homozygous variant of either of the two SNPs, while four individuals are heterozygous at 22018G/A. This implies that during the Iron Age processed dairy products like cheese and yoghurt still represented the common supply of milk-derived nutrients while fresh milk played only a minor role in the regions studied here. The population-wide spread of the lactose tolerance trait in Europe therefore clearly post-dates the Iron Age

Alirocumab and cardiovascular outcomes after acute coronary syndrome

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Alirocumab and Cardiovascular Outcomes after Acute Coronary Syndrome

BACKGROUN