Patterns of tuberculosis in the Americas: how can modern biomedicine inform the ancient past?

Abstract

Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease that continues to take its toll on human lives. Paleopathological research indicates that it has been a significant cause of death among humans for at least five thousand years. Because of the devastating consequences to human health, social systems, and endangered primate species, TB has been the subject of many and varied research efforts throughout the world, efforts that are amassing an enormous amount of data concerning the causative agent Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Despite sequencing of the M. tuberculosis genome and numerous molecular epidemiological studies, many questions remain regarding the origin, evolution, and future co-evolutionary trajectory of M. tuberculosis and humans. Indeed, the origin of pre-Columbian New World TB has been and remains hotly debated, and resolution of this controversy will likely only come with integration of data and theory from multiple disciplines. In this paper, we discuss the pre-Columbian TB controversy, and then use research from biological and biomedical sciences to help inform paleopathological and archaeological studies of this ubiquitous disease that plagued our ancient forbears.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis Spoligotypes in Monterrey, Mexico

“…Studies of single nucleotide polymorphisms of Mycobacterium leprae have suggested that leprosy originated in Africa and that the Hansen disease cases in the Americas are from European and African descendants as a result of emigration and the slave trade (11). Even though molecular evidence of the presence of M. tuberculosis in the pre-Colombian age has been reported (19,25), controversy over this issue remains. If tuberculosis existed in native populations, the prevalence of specific spoligotypes would shrink significantly, since the population of about 22 million people living in Mesoamerica in 1520 was reduced by 95% by 1600, mainly because of infectious diseases (1).…”

Tuberculosis in post-contact Native Americans of Brazil: Paleopathological and paleogenetic evidence from the Tenetehara-Guajajara

“…As described by Wilbur and Buikstra [71], social disruption, forced mobility, crowding onto reservations, poor sanitation, extreme poverty, and malnutrition, with frequent exposure to pathogens, contributed to TB as a population-wide health problem. This was the case with the Tenetehara-Guajajara people since the 18th century.…”

Palaeomicrobiology of Tuberculosis

“…One cause of criba orbitaria is iron deficiency anaemia, and in severe cases this enhances the virulence of MTB infection (Ratledge 2004). It has been suggested that the iron status within pre-Columbian populations in the Americas may have had a profound impact on the clinical presentation of the disease (Wilbur and Buikstra 2006). Work is just starting on the impact of neoplastic disease, but tuberculosis infection has been detected in an infant with Langerhans cell histiocytosis from the Vác mummy study group .…”