On the Origin of Leprosy

• Published in: Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) Vol. 308; no. 5724; pp. 1040 - 1042
• Main Authors: Monot, Marc, Honoré, Nadine, Garnier, Thierry, Araoz, Romulo, Coppée, Jean-Yves, Lacroix, Céline, Sow, Samba, Spencer, John S, Truman, Richard W, Williams, Diana L, Gelber, Robert, Virmond, Marcos, Flageul, Béatrice, Cho, Sang-Nae, Ji, Baohong, Paniz-Mondolfi, Alberto, Convit, Jacinto, Young, Saroj, Fine, Paul E, Rasolofo, Voahangy, Brennan, Patrick J, Cole, Stewart T
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington, DC American Association for the Advancement of Science 13.05.2005; The American Association for the Advancement of Science; American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
• Subjects: Africa; Africa - epidemiology; Americas; Americas - epidemiology; Armadillos; Asia; Asia - epidemiology; Bacterial diseases; Bacteriology; Biochemistry, Molecular Biology; Biological and medical sciences; Biological Evolution; Coding; Comparative analysis; Demography; Emigration and Immigration; Europe; Europe - epidemiology; Evolution; Genes, Bacterial; Genetic aspects; Genome, Bacterial; Genomes; Genomics; Geographic regions; History, 18th Century; History, 19th Century; History, Ancient; History, Medieval; Human bacterial diseases; Human populations; Humans; Infectious diseases; Interspersed Repetitive Sequences; Leprosy; Leprosy - epidemiology; Leprosy - history; Leprosy - microbiology; Leprosy - transmission; Life Sciences; Medical sciences; Minisatellite Repeats; Molecular biology; Mycobacterium leprae; Mycobacterium leprae - classification; Mycobacterium leprae - genetics; Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis; Pathogens; Pathology; Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; Population Dynamics; Pseudogenes; Sequence Analysis, DNA; Topology; Tropical bacterial diseases; Tuberculosis; Americas; Asia; Europe; Africa; France; Africa, East; Human; Skin disease; Mycobacterium leprae; Leprosy; Mycobacterial infection; Epidemiology; Infection; Mycobacteriales; Dissemination; Bacteriosis; Mycobacteriaceae; Molecular epidemiology; Bacteria; Actinomycetes
• ISSN: 0036-8075; 1095-9203
• DOI: 10.1126/science/1109759

Leprosy, a chronic human disease with potentially debilitating neurological consequences, results from infection with Mycobacterium leprae. This unculturable pathogen has undergone extensive reductive evolution, with half of its genome now occupied by pseudogenes. Using comparative genomics, we demonstrated that all extant cases of leprosy are attributable to a single clone whose dissemination worldwide can be retraced from analysis of very rare single-nucleotide polymorphisms. The disease seems to have originated in Eastern Africa or the Near East and spread with successive human migrations. Europeans or North Africans introduced leprosy into West Africa and the Americas within the past 500 years.