Molecular evidence for tuberculosis in an ancient Egyptian mummy

Molecular analysis of skeletal tuberculosis in an ancient Egyptian population

“…The study material contained three cases presenting with morphological changes of typical tuberculosis. The ®rst case (identi®cation number TT-84-70) has already been described extensively in a previous report [5]. This was the mummy torso of a young adult male with head and both arms missing.…”

“…In general, this approach has been used for the detection of tuberculosis [1±10], and also for the identi®cation of other pathogens, such as M. leprae [22,23], Plasmodium falciparum [24], Trypanosoma cruzi [25], Yersinia pestis [26] and Escherichia coli [27]. Previous studies had shown that this approach is applicable to ancient Egyptian material, as M. tuberculosis was identi®ed in one of the mummies investigated [5]. The presence of M. tuberculosis DNA in Egyptian material has also been con®rmed recently by Crubezy and co-workers in a 5400-year-old predynastic skeleton [8].…”

“…Most of those studies have been performed on bone tissue of isolated cases or small series of samples, mostly with typical osseous alterations suggestive of tuberculosis. In very few instances, mycobacterial DNA was also detected in mummi®ed internal organs from Egyptian and South American mummies [2,5]. However, no data are available yet about the frequency of those infectious diseases in previous times.…”

“…Earlier studies identi®ed DNA of the M. tuberculosis complex in skeletal and soft tissue material from several mummi®ed individuals from ancient Egypt [5,12] buried in the necropolis of Thebes-West and dating from one of the most prosperous eras of Egyptian history (the so-called`New Kingdom', c. 1550±1000 BC). These preliminary studies suggested that M. tuberculosis DNA can be identi®ed unambiguously in the ancient Egyptian material, allowing an unequivocal diagnosis of tuberculous infection.…”

Mummies

“…Tuberculosis has been diagnosed in mummified lung tissue (Salo et al, 1994), and acid-fast bacilli have been found in association with tuberculous changes (Allison et al, 1973;Zimmerman, 1979;Gerszten et al, 2001). It has been possible to detect mycobacterial DNA (Nerlich et al, 1997;Mays et al, 2001;Konomi et al, 2002;Zink et al, 2003;Donoghue et al, 2004;Spigelman et al, 2006). Although the caveats described earlier for human aDNA studies certainly also apply to bacterial ancient DNA, the methods do point to the possibilities of carrying off much wider, epidemiological studies, e.g., the study by Zink et al (2003), where 85 Egyptian mummies were analyzed, and based on further typing of the DNA, the authors suggested that Mycobacterium tuberculosis did not originate from the cattle infecting Mycobacterium bovis.…”