ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2005
Co-infection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Mycobacterium leprae in human archaeological samples: a possible explanation for the historical decline of leprosy.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2005. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 43 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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43 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 188 citations in OpenAlex.
- Leprosy in skeletons from archaeological sites: A systematic review.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2025Pooled it
- Review
- Paleopathology Meets Public Health: Deep-Time Syndemics and the Ecology of Emerging Infections.Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- A Heavy Issue: Changes in Body Size in London Before, During and After the Black Death.American journal of biological anthropology · 2025Article
- Article
- Bacterial, fungal and parasitic co-infections in leprosy: A scoping review.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2023Article
- Ancient pathogens provide a window into health and well-being.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- A Young Female With Borderline Lepromatous Leprosy and Tuberculous Lymphadenitis: A Rare Coinfection.Cureus · 2022Article
- Mycobacterium leprae diversity and population dynamics in medieval Europe from novel ancient genomes.BMC biology · 2021Article
- Human major infections: Tuberculosis, treponematoses, leprosy-A paleopathological perspective of their evolution.PloS one · 2021Article
- 2000-year-old pathogen genomes reconstructed from metagenomic analysis of Egyptian mummified individuals.BMC biology · 2020Article
- Coexistence of mycobacterial infections - Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Mycobacterium leprae - in Sri Lanka: a case series.Journal of medical case reports · 2020Article
- The past, present and future of ancient bacterial DNA.Microbial genomics · 2020Review
- Tracking down the White Plague: The skeletal evidence of tuberculous meningitis in the Robert J. Terry Anatomical Skeletal Collection.PloS one · 2020Article
- Coinfection of leprosy and tuberculosis.BMJ case reports · 2018Article
- Phylogenomics and antimicrobial resistance of the leprosy bacillus Mycobacterium leprae.Nature communications · 2018Article
- Two Cases of Delayed Diagnosis of Leprosy in Mauritania.Case reports in dermatological medicine · 2018Article
- Zucchini Yellow Mosaic Virus Infection Limits Establishment and Severity of Powdery Mildew in Wild Populations ofFrontiers in plant science · 2018Article
- Enriched whole genome sequencing identified compensatory mutations in the RNA polymerase gene of rifampicin-resistantInfection and drug resistance · 2018Article
- Article
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8 authors at 4 institutions in 5 countries.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Both leprosy and tuberculosis were prevalent in Europe during the first millennium but thereafter leprosy declined. It is not known why this occurred, but one suggestion is that cross-immunity protected tuberculosis patients from leprosy. To investigate any relationship between the two diseases, selected archaeological samples, dating from the Roman period to the thirteenth century, were examined for both Mycobacterium leprae and Mycobacterium tuberculosis DNA, using PCR. The work was carried out and verified in geographically separate and independent laboratories. Several specimens with palaeopathological signs of leprosy were found to contain DNA from both pathogens, indicating that these diseases coexisted in the past. We suggest that the immunological changes found in multi-bacillary leprosy, in association with the socio-economic impact on those suffering from the disease, led to increased mortality from tuberculosis and therefore to the historical decline in leprosy.
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