How infectious diseases arrived in the colonial Americas

Ville N Pimenoff; Charlotte J Houldcroft

doi:10.7554/eLife.72791

How infectious diseases arrived in the colonial Americas

Elife. 2021 Sep 9:10:e72791. doi: 10.7554/eLife.72791.

Authors

Ville N Pimenoff^{1

2

3}, Charlotte J Houldcroft⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Laboratory Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
² Department of Cultures, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
³ Faculty of Medicine, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland.
⁴ Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Disease, Department of Medicine, University of Cambridge School of Clinical Medicine, Cambridge, United Kingdom.

Abstract

Analysis of viral DNA from human remains suggests that the transatlantic slave trade may have introduced new pathogens that contributed to the devastating disease outbreaks in colonial Mexico.

Keywords: Africa; ancient viruses; b19v; genetics; genomics; hbv; human; infectious disease; microbiology; paleogenomics; paleovirology; virus.

Publication types

Comment

MeSH terms

Americas / epidemiology
Communicable Diseases* / epidemiology
Humans
Mexico / epidemiology