A 9,000-year record of Chagas' disease.
Tissue specimens from 283 principally spontaneously (naturally) desiccated human mummies from coastal and low valley sites in northern Chile and southern Peru were tested with a DNA probe directed at a kinetoplast DNA segment of Trypanosoma cruzi. The time interval spanned by the eleven major cultural groups represented in the sample ranged from approximately 9,000 years B.P. (7050 B.C.) to approximately the time of the Spanish conquest, approximately 450 B.P. ( approximately 1500 A.D.). Forty-one percent of the tissue extracts, amplified by the PCR reacted positively (i.e., hybridized) with the probe. Prevalence patterns demonstrated no statistically significant differences among the individual cultural groups, nor among subgroups compared on the basis of age, sex, or weight of specimen tested. These results suggest that the sylvatic (animal-infected) cycle of Chagas' disease was probably well established at the time that the earliest humans (members of the Chinchorro culture) first peopled this segment of the Andean coast and inadvertently joined the many other mammal species acting as hosts for this parasite.
Aufderheide
Arthur C
AC
Paleobiology Laboratory, Department of Pathology, University of Minnesota, Duluth School of Medicine, Duluth, MN 55812, USA. aaufderh@d.umn.edu
Salo
Wilmar
W
Madden
Michael
M
Streitz
John
J
Buikstra
Jane
J
Guhl
Felipe
F
Arriaza
Bernardo
B
Renier
Colleen
C
Wittmers
Lorentz E
LE
Fornaciari
Gino
G
Allison
Marvin
M
D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000818:Animals; D014355:Chagas Disease / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000266:history* / Q000469:parasitology / Q000635:transmission; D002677:Chile / Q000453:epidemiology; D005006:Ethnicity; D005260:Female; D049690:History, Ancient; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009106:Mummies / Q000469:parasitology*; D009132:Muscles / Q000469:parasitology; D009929:Organ Size; D009928:Organ Specificity; D015995:Prevalence; D012107:Research Design; D012737:Sex Factors; D013997:Time Factors; D014349:Trypanosoma cruzi / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification*