Abstract
SummaryAncient pathogen genomics is an emerging field allowing reconstruction of past epidemics. The demise of post-contact American populations may, at least in part, have been caused by paratyphoid fever brought by Europeans. We retrieved genome-wide data from two Spanish soldiers who were besieging the city of Barcelona in 1652, during the Reapers' War. Their ancestry derived from the Basque region and Sardinia, respectively, (at that time, this island belonged to the Spanish kingdom). Despite the proposed plague epidemic, we could not find solid evidence for the presence of the causative plague agent in these individuals. However, we retrieved from one individual a substantial fraction of the Salmonella enterica serovar Paratyphi C lineage linked to paratyphoid fever in colonial period Mexico. Our results support a growing body of evidence that Paratyphi C enteric fever was more prevalent in Europe and the Americas in the past than it is today.
Highlights
Generation sequencing techniques allow for the recovery of historic pathogens from a variety of sources including medical collections (De-Dios, 2019; Van Dorp et al, 2020), ancient parchments, ancient ‘‘chewing gum’’ (Jensen et al, 2019), and human archaeological remains (Maixner et al, 2016; Muhlemann et al, 2018; Vagene et al, 2018; Zhou et al, 2018; Key et al, 2020)
The demise of post-contact American populations may, at least in part, have been caused by paratyphoid fever brought by Europeans
We retrieved from one individual a substantial fraction of the Salmonella enterica serovar Paratyphi C lineage linked to paratyphoid fever in colonial period Mexico
Summary
Generation sequencing techniques allow for the recovery of historic pathogens from a variety of sources including medical collections (De-Dios, 2019; Van Dorp et al, 2020), ancient parchments (de-Dios et al, 2020; Pinar et al, 2020), ancient ‘‘chewing gum’’ (Jensen et al, 2019), and human archaeological remains (Maixner et al, 2016; Muhlemann et al, 2018; Vagene et al, 2018; Zhou et al, 2018; Key et al, 2020). Ancient genomics has recovered DNA attributable to the pathogen Salmonella enterica, a species comprising over 2500 serovars. These include Salmonella enterica serotypes Typhi (or typhoid fever, which accounts for 75% of cases) and Paratyphi A, B, and C (or paratyphoid fevers) (Cash-Goldwasser and Barry, 2018). The former serovar is globally prevalent among paratyphoid fevers (Ochiai et al, 2005; Stanaway et al, 2019), while Paratyphi B and C are relatively scarce (Achtman et al, 2012; Cash-Goldwasser and Barry, 2018). Typhoid and paratyphoid fevers are prevalent in developing countries of subSaharan Africa, South East Asia, and South Asia, where they represent one of the leading causes of death and disability (Naghavi et al, 2017; Vos et al, 2017)
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