Molecular paleoparasitological diagnosis of Ascaris sp. from coprolites: new scenery of ascariasis in pre-Colombian South America times

Paleoparasitologic, paleogenetic and paleobotanic analysis of XVIII century coprolites from the church La Concepción in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain

“…reported the recovery of aDNA from a concentrate of parasite eggs from the Middle Age site Place d´Armes in Namur (XIV century) (Loreille et al 2001). Later, a sample from Walraversijde, Belgium (XVI century), which was used as positive control on South American paleogenetic analyses, showed a segment of cyt b gene from aDNA directly extracted from coprolites (Leles et al 2008). In this study, we confirm the ability of this methodology to recover aDNA without the prior concentration of parasite eggs (Iñiguez et al 2003, 2006, Leles et al 2008.…”

“…Later, a sample from Walraversijde, Belgium (XVI century), which was used as positive control on South American paleogenetic analyses, showed a segment of cyt b gene from aDNA directly extracted from coprolites (Leles et al 2008). In this study, we confirm the ability of this methodology to recover aDNA without the prior concentration of parasite eggs (Iñiguez et al 2003, 2006, Leles et al 2008. This paleoanalysis, based on an interdisciplinary approach, is the first of its kind performed in archaeological samples from the Canary Islands.…”

“…Human and Ascaris sp. targets were analyzed by procedures described by Fernandes et al (2008) and Leles et al (2008), respectively. For Ascaris sp.…”

Synthesizing Parasitology with Archaeology in Paleopathology

“…In North America, Dittmar et al (2003) confirmed the diagnosis of Chagas disease in a mummified body with megacolon described by . However, PCR technique was also applied to detect helminth infection in sediments and coprolites (Iñiguez et al 2003;Leles et al 2008Leles et al , 2010 as performed by Loreille et al (2001), Loreille & Bouchet (2003). The South Korean research is also sequencing Ascaris lumbcricoides and Trichuris trichiura DNA, and the T. trichiura data have been published (Oh et al 2010).…”

Paleoparasitological report on Ascaris aDNA from an ancient East Asian sample

“…In the case of ancient Ascaris spp, one of the most widespread parasitic infections in humans (Loreille & Bouchet 2003), PCR-based analyses have been performed and reported by Loreille et al (2001) and Leles et al (2008). However, even though Ascaris spp have been identified by molecular studies of archaeological specimens, their genetic diagnosis has not been studied in greater detail so far (Anderson 2001, Peng et al 2005, Leles et al 2010.…”