Schuenemann, Verena J., Avanzi, Charlotte, Krause-Kyora, Ben, Seitz, Alexander, Herbig, Alexander, Inskip, Sarah, Bonazzi, Marion, Reiter, Ella, Urban, Christian, Dangvard Pedersen, Dorthe, Taylor, G. Michael, Singh, Pushpendra, Stewart, Graham R., Velemínský, Petr, Likovsky, Jakub, Marcsik, Antónia, Molnár, Erika, Pálfi, György, Mariotti, Valentina, Riga, Alessandro, Belcastro, M. Giovanna, Boldsen, Jesper L., Nebel, Almut, Mays, Simon, Donoghue, Helen D., Zakrzewski, Sonia, Benjak, Andrej, Nieselt, Kay, Cole, Stewart T. and Krause, Johannes (2018) Ancient genomes reveal a high diversity of Mycobacterium leprae in medieval Europe. PLOS Pathogens, 14 (5), 1-17, [e1006997]. (doi:10.1371/journal.ppat.1006997).
Abstract
Studying ancient DNA allows us to retrace the evolutionary history of human pathogens, such as Mycobacterium leprae, the main causative agent of leprosy. Leprosy is one of the oldest recorded and most stigmatizing diseases in human history. The disease was prevalent in Europe until the 16th century and is still endemic in many countries with over 200,000 new cases reported annually. Previous worldwide studies on modern and European medieval M. leprae genomes revealed that they cluster into five separate lineages of which two were present in medieval northwestern Europe. In this study, we analyzed 10 new medieval M. leprae genomes including the so far oldest M. leprae genome from one of the earliest known cases of leprosy in the United Kingdom—a skeleton from the Great Chesterford cemetery with a calibrated age of 415–545 AD. This dataset provides a genetic time transect of M. leprae diversity in Europe over the past 1500 years. We find four of the five known distinct M. leprae lineages to be present in the early medieval period, and three lineages were detected within a single cemetery from the high medieval period. Altogether these findings suggest a higher genetic diversity of M. leprae strains in medieval Europe at various time points than previously assumed.
The resulting more complex picture of the past phylogeography of leprosy in Europe impacts current phylogeographical models of M. leprae lineages suggesting alternative models for the past spread of leprosy such as a wide spread prevalence of different lineages in Eurasia already in the Antiquity or maybe even an origin in Western Eurasia. Furthermore, these results highlight how studying ancient M. leprae strains improves understanding of the history of leprosy worldwide.
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