People have long hypothesized that Columbus brought the basics of syphilis back with him when he returned to Europe from the New World. But it was always circumstantially based on the fact that the timing of the first recorded syphilis outbreak matched up. But we're not ones to indict an explorer based on circumstantial evidence. At least not when we can use science.
Kristin N. Harper, a researcher in molecular genetics at Emory University, led a study showing that the straing of Treponema pallidum causing the STD syphilis arose is closely related to a strain responsible for the nonvenereal infection yaws, particularly in a variety recently found in children in Guyana, the only known site of yaws infections today.
Harper said that the study supported “the hypothesis that syphilis, or some progenitor, came from the New World.”
With STDs on the rise in the U.S., it's good to know who to blame. Our geographic predecessors. If syphilis wasn't so darn cute (the microbe, not the results), I'd be real mad.
The study examined "21 genetic regions examined in 26 geographically disparate strains of pathogenic Treponema" and found that "the closest relatives of syphilis-causing strains identified in this study were found in South America, providing support for the Columbian theory of syphilis's origin."
The authors say it's unclear how the pre-syphilis strain spread, since it was nonvenereal, but there's the chance that "a strain even more closely related to subsp. pallidum once existed in pre-Columbian South America and was transmitted venereally."
Once the disease went venereal, though, Columbus' mercenary crew likely went hog wild spreading sex and violence across the continent.
Critics argue that the study is inconclusive and that syphilis is just as likely to have spontaneously popped up in Europe in 1495, two years after Columbus returned to Europe. Sounds fishy to me. There's also evidence that the disease may have existed in Europe long before Columbus returned, though with a much smaller epidemiological pattern. If that's the case, there's always the chance that the disease was brought back by early viking travelers, an explanation that, from a purely aesthetic point, I almost prefer.
[Read the full report, via New York Times and the BBC]
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