According to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, the number of syphilis-infected patients in Korea was confirmed to be 1,881 as of August 2024. Among these, 679 patients were in stage 1, 316 were in stage 2 with skin rash, and 39 were in stage 3, in which syphilis spread throughout the body and caused organ damage.
When did syphilis, considered a terrible sexually transmitted disease, begin to spread among people? The discovery of a syphilis-type bacterial genome in a 9,000-year-old skeleton from the American continent gave support to the theory that it originated in the American continent. Based on an international paper led by researchers at the Max Planck Institute in Germany published in Nature, the British Guardian recently published This is what was reported.
After King Charles VIII of France invaded Italy in 1494, an unknown epidemic broke out in the French army’s camp and spread throughout Europe after they returned to France the following year. This is the first historical record of syphilis.
Since then, a fierce debate has raged among scholars about the origin of syphilis. One side claims that syphilis originated in the Americas and was brought to Europe by Columbus in 1493. On the other hand, it is argued that syphilis was already lurking on the European continent even before Columbus set sail.
Ancient DNA from remains excavated throughout the American continent provided a clue to solving the mystery. Bones infected with strains of syphilis prior to Columbus’ voyage to the New World contained bacterial genomes of the syphilis family, suggesting that syphilis had its roots in the Americas.
There are three subspecies of syphilis (Treponema pallidum). These subspecies are the causative agents of syphilis, yaws, a tropical skin disease, and bejel, a non-venereal syphilis that mainly affects children. Syphilis occurs throughout the world, while syphilis and syphilis are tropical diseases found mainly in equatorial regions.
“We were able to reconstruct five genomes from these bones, confirming that they are sister strains of the syphilis strains circulating in humans today,” said Dr. Kirsten Voss, leader of the Molecular Paleopathology Group at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. “He said. He emphasized, “All three species appear to have appeared on the American continent.”
Dr. Boss and his colleagues extracted and reconstructed ancient Treponema pallidum DNA from a hip bone from Argentina, a lower femur from Chile, upper and lower leg bones from Mexico, and teeth from Peru. Because they knew the age of the bones through radiocarbon dating, they were able to trace these strains back to a common ancestor that lived up to 9,000 years ago.
“This was a time when humans were already well established in the Americas and did not interact with populations from other regions,” Dr. Voss explained. “They were basically geographically and biologically isolated from the Americas.” This suggests that syphilis and its sisters had roots in the Americas, but spread globally through the Americas and Africa due to human trafficking and European arrivals in the decades and centuries following the initial epidemic outbreak.
However, Dr. Voss showed a cautious attitude, saying, “I don’t necessarily think we have solved the mystery because there are still so many important questions that need to be answered.” “We are looking at very limited data sources, so we are trying to keep an open mind,” he said, noting that the debate is not yet over.
The paper can be found at the following link:
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Source: kormedi.com
