Background Hansen’s disease (leprosy), widespread in medieval Europe, is today mainly prevalent in tropical and subtropical regions with around 200,000 new cases reported annually. Despite its long history and appearance in historical records, its origins and past dissemination patterns are still widely unknown. Applying ancient DNA approaches to its major causative agent, Mycobacterium leprae, can significantly improve our understanding of the disease’s complex history. Previous studies have identified a high genetic continuity of the pathogen over the last 1500 years and the existence of at least four M. leprae lineages in some parts of Europe since the Early Medieval period. Results Here, we reconstructed 19 ancient M. leprae genomes to further investigate M. leprae’s genetic variation in Europe, with a dedicated focus on bacterial genomes from previously unstudied regions (Belarus, Iberia, Russia, Scotland), from multiple sites in a single region (Cambridgeshire, England), and from two Iberian leprosaria. Overall, our data confirm the existence of similar phylogeographic patterns across Europe, including high diversity in leprosaria. Further, we identified a new genotype in Belarus. By doubling the number of complete ancient M. leprae genomes, our results improve our knowledge of the past phylogeography of M. leprae and reveal a particularly high M. leprae diversity in European medieval leprosaria. Conclusions Our findings allow us to detect similar patterns of strain diversity across Europe with branch 3 as the most common branch and the leprosaria as centers for high diversity. The higher resolution of our phylogeny tree also refined our understanding of the interspecies transfer between red squirrels and humans pointing to a late antique/early medieval transmission. Furthermore, with our new estimates on the past population diversity of M. leprae, we gained first insights into the disease’s global history in relation to major historic events such as the Roman expansion or the beginning of the regular transatlantic long distance trade. In summary, our findings highlight how studying ancient M. leprae genomes worldwide improves our understanding of leprosy’s global history and can contribute to current models of M. leprae’s worldwide dissemination, including interspecies transmissions.
In this study, total mercury (THg) was analyzed in archaeological human bone from 23 sites dating to between the Middle Neolithic and the Antiquity. A total of 370 indi-
Resumo O trabalho que me proponho realizar baseia-se num estudo antropológico sobre criança hiperactiva. Ao longo de toda a pesquisa antropológica tenho como objectivo, por um lado, contribuir com um olhar mais atento ao tema criança, situar a etnografia na Antropologia médica e psiquiátrica e compreender a emergência da categoria em análise no contexto psiquiátrico. Por outro lado, no terreno, pretendo abordar o modo como é deslindado o diagnóstico hiperactivo, como a doença é entendida em contexto familiar, comunitário, escolar e como a própria criança gere o seu papel de doente, a estigmatização e o controlo exercido no seu corpo, nomeadamente, através da medicação. Neste sentido, é também útil abordar as dicotomias illness/disease, bem como estudar o modo como se delineiam as fronteiras entre o "normal" e o "patológico". Torna-se também relevante analisar, não só, o legado biológico mas sobretudo social quanto à etiologia e ideia de representação social da doença.Palavras-chave Hiperactividade; criança; antropologia médica; psiquiatria.Abstract The work I propose to carry out is based on an anthropological study of the hyperactive child. Throughout the anthropological research I have as aim or objective on one side to contribute with an attentive look at the theme child, situate or place the ethnography in medical and psychiatric anthropology, and to understand the need of the categories emergency in the psychiatric context. On the other hand, I pretend to approach the way the hyperactive diagnosis is explained or found, how the illness is understood in the family, community and school context and how the child itself manages its role of ill or sick, the being put aside, and the control over its own body namely through the use of medication. It is in this way that it is also useful to approach the duality illness/disease, as well as the study of how the frontiers between "normal" and "pathological" are outlined. It is also relevant that we analyse not only the biological legacy but also the social legacy as to the aetiology and idea of the social representation of the illness.
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