The Origins of Tuberculosis: Now Predicted from Humans, 70,000 Years Ago

Scientists now believe that the origins of tuberculosis, a potentially serious infectious disease that mainly affects the lungs, can be tracked down to even before the Neolithic period. According to researchers, findings suggest that it first began to domesticate livestock and build urban centers where tuberculosis could suffuse easily from one person to another.

A comprehensive analysis of over 250 current strains of the disease throughout different countries around the world shows that it began more than 70,000 years ago with the emergence of Homo sapiens in Africa.

The study examined a variety of genetic variations of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, showing that some may have suffered from the first strain of tuberculosis in that area. In fact, the early origin of tuberculosis, which was originally thought to have been transmitted from domesticated animals to humans, is now not thought to have originally occurred this way.

 "We have found that TB was infecting humans before they left Africa around 70,000 year ago. This implies the bacteria have been able to survive in small hunter-gatherer populations," lead author Iñaki Comas of the Centre for Public Health Research in Valencia wrote.

Yet Dr. Comas notes that as the human population increased both during the Neolithic age with agriculture and a result of the Industrial revolution, so did TB.

The Mayo Clinic notes that while tuberculosis was usually just seen in developed countries, infections began increasing in 1985 due to the emergency of HIV. Fortunately, by 1993, the numbers decrease. Yet statistics still show that each year alone there are nearly 1 to 2 million deaths due to TB, with higher numbers in developing countries that could potentially cause a global threat if left untreated.

The medical organization notes that many strains of tuberculosis are resistant to drugs used to treat the disease and those with active TB must take several types of medications for many months in order to eradicate the problem and prevent the development of antibiotic resistance to the health issue.

More information regarding the study can be found via the online journal Nature Genetics.