Tuberculosis Ravaged The Heart Of 18th Century Europe: Mummified Bodies Reveal

New findings published in the journal Nature Communications show that a 200 year-old Hungarian crypt holds some secrets to how tuberculosis (TB) took hold in 18th century Europe.

Researchers discovered an 18th century crypt in the Dominican church of Vac in Hungary that yielded 14 tuberculosis genomes, suggesting that mixed infecetions were common when TB was at its peak in Europe.

"Microbiological analyses of samples from contemporary TB patients usually report a single strain of tuberculosis per patient," said lead study author Lead author Professor Mark Pallen, from Warwick Medical School, in a news release. "By contrast, five of the eight bodies in our study yielded more than one type of tuberculosis -- remarkably from one individual we obtained evidence of three distinct strains."

They used a technique that's known as "metagenomics" in order to identify TB DNA via historical specimens that are important for directing the sequencing of DNA from samples without growing bacteria or deliberately fishing out TB DNA.

"Poignantly, we found evidence of an intimate link between strains from in a middle-aged mother and her grown-up daughter, suggesting both family members died from this devastating infection."

To date the origin of the lineage of TB strains, researchers used 18th century sequences commonly found in Europe and America.

"By showing that historical strains can be accurately mapped to contemporary lineages, we have ruled out, for early modern Europe, the kind of scenario recently proposed for the Americas -- that is wholesale replacement of one major lineage by another -- and have confirmed the genotypic continuity of an infection that has ravaged the heart of Europe since prehistoric times."

Furthermore, professor Pallen added that with TB resurgent in many parts of the world, the struggle to contain the infection has been far from over. 

"We have shown that metagenomic approaches can document past infections. However, we have also recently shown that metagenomics can identify and characterize pathogens in contemporary samples, so such approaches might soon also inform current and future infectious disease diagnosis and control."