Variola virus DNA in skeletal remains, 17th to 18th centuries, southeastern France

Abstract

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Among Bodies: Portuguese Cemeterial Exhumations Three Years after a Pandemic

“…Still, when it comes to pathogens, the former can be detectable and/or contamination can occur if human soft or hard tissues are available even after a long duration of time. Proof of this lies in studies previously published, showing the detection of the variola virus in mummies and skeletons from the 17th-18th centuries in Siberia, Lithuania, and France [68][69][70]; the discovery of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in a skeleton from the 10th-11th centuries in Argentina [71]; the identification of Yersinia pestis in skeletons from the 14th century in England and France [45,46]; and the detection of Mycobacterium leprae in skeletons from across Europe dated from the 6th to the 20th centuries [72]. It goes without saying that the postmortem analysis and detection of pathogens is of great value to the field of (paleo)pathology, providing new insight into the aetiology, geographical distribution, and pathogenesis of re-emerging infectious diseases of the former [73][74][75].…”

Detection of Ancient Viruses and Long-Term Viral Evolution

“…Ancient variola virus (VARV) sequences have been discovered in several samples: a 300-year-old Siberian mummy, a 300-year-old French skeletal specimen, a 367-to 379-yearold Lithuanian child mummy, two specimens from the Czech National Museum, a 229to 262-year-old ethanol-fixed infant leg from England, and thirteen 970-to 1400-year-old Northern European individuals [66,153,154,157,159]. Almost complete VARV genomes were obtained from samples except for in the case of the Siberian mummy and the French skeleton specimen, even though the VARV genome is relatively large, approximately 186 kb.…”

Smallpox's antiquity in doubt

“…Fragility: Duchêne et al 2020 54 Biagini et al 2012;Duggan et al 2016;Pajer et al 2017;Mühlemann et al 2020;Ferrari et al 2020;Meffray et al 2021. 55 Notably, Biagini et al 2012;Meffray et al 2021. Mühlemann et al 2020 likewise present some low-coverage paleogenomes.…”